WWDC 2017 Scholarships Will Accept Applications on March 27

Each year Apple will offer free WWDC scholarships for select student developers and STEM organization members who have no enough money to buy tickets for the conference. It could be a heavy burden for students or new developers to cost $1599 for a ticket, plus the travel and accomodation expenses. The Scholarships program provides an opportunity of attending annual WWDC with most expenses covered.

This year, Apple will begin to accept WWDC sholarship applications on March 27. Detailed rules and deadlines are revealed on the WWDC17 Scholarships page.

Submissions will be accepted from Monday, March 27, 2017 at 10:00 a.m. PDT until Sunday, April 2, 2017 at 5:00 p.m. PDT. All applicants will be notified of their status by April 21. For the past years Apple offer only free tickets to scholarship winners, while travel and acommodations are not included. Yet this year, developers selected for the scholarship will receive a WWDC17 ticket and also lodging free of charge.

Like previous years, the WWDC Scholarship applicants must be at least 13 years or older, registered as an Apple developer, and enrolled in a course of study. Members and alumni of a STEM organization are also eligible. On the contrary, the application process keeps changing over years. This year it puts focus on Switf Playgrounds.

Applicants are required to create a visually interactive scene in a Swift playground that can be experienced within three minutes, and to describe the features and technologies used in their presentation. Swift Playgrounds for iPad and Xcode on macOS can be used to accomplish this task. Besides, a 500 words (or less) essay is also required for submission, to show the company “how you’ve considered sharing your coding knowledge and enthusiasm for computer science with others.”

Starting from 2014, Apple decided to take a lottery way of distributing WWDC tickets. Anyone who want to attend the conference are instructed to register online, and then 5,000 developers are selected randomly to win the chance to buy expensive tickets.

WWDC 2017 runs from June 5th to June 9th at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. During the period, iOS and macOS developers will get a glimpse at the Apple’s roadmap for the year, and have opportunities to communicate with the company’s engineers face-to-face. It is expected that Apple will officially release iOS 11 along with macOS 10.13, watchOS4, and tvOS 11 at its annual conference.