The Swedish National Graduate School in Scientific Computing (NGSSC) was founded in 1996, and has so far admitted 75 graduate students in five nationally announced admission rounds. The aim of NGSSC is to produce PhDs with skills in strategically important disciplines together with a broad knowledge of numerical and computational techniques, and to spread the use of computations into new areas of research. NGSSC consists of both a geographical and a disciplinary network and focuses on providing core knowledge on advanced computational techniques to graduate students in application fields. This presents some special challenges to the program, such as developing its own identity and dealing with the very different backgrounds of the students. The NGSSC activities focus on a package of specially developed courses, tailored for student groups with very mixed backgrounds. The courses are given in intensive format, and are compulsory for the students participating in the program. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.