A direct path to computer science

 Those who receive the scholarships will get $10,000 each year as long as they maintain full-time enrollment at an accredited school.

Internships run for 12 weeks during the summer and take place after students' freshman years of college. Interns are embedded with a software engineering team and paired up with another intern, a manager and mentors to work on projects, which may be for Amazon Web services, Alexa or the retail platform.

Among the latest recipients of the scholarships was Ashley Chu, who currently attends the University of California, Berkeley. As she explained in a profile on the Amazon Future Engineer website, "I did not have a direct path to computer science: I first got hooked on CS after seeing how it was used to create my favorite films and video games!" Chu noted that the Amazon Future Engineer program "has changed my life. This past summer, I worked for Amazon Web Services, and despite the remote format, I had an unforgettable experience. One takeaway I had was to stand up and speak out. I've always lacked confidence, but especially with the support of my jobs with computer science degree interns, I now feel so much more confident and proud of who I am."