First-Year Applicants

Source: https://admission.stanford.edu/apply/first-year/home_school.html Parent: https://admission.stanford.edu/apply/first-year/index.html

Guidelines for Homeschooled Applicants

Homeschooled students, like all other students seeking undergraduate admission to Stanford, apply using the Common Application. These additional guidelines may be helpful as you complete your application.

Academic Record

We expect that you have successfully undertaken a rigorous course of study distributed across the humanities, sciences, math, social studies and languages. In addition to a transcript, we encourage you to submit a detailed description of your curriculum, but it is not necessary to follow a prescribed or approved homeschooling program. We are interested in how you have gone about the learning process, not how many courses you have completed. Please visit our Preparing for Stanford Academics page for additional information.\

In particular, we would like to understand:

• how and why your family chose homeschooling
• how your learning process was organized
• what benefits accrued
• what, if any, choices you had to make to accomplish this type of education

Please note: A high school diploma or the equivalent is required in order to begin classes at Stanford. We accept any high school diploma recognized by your state.

Letters of Recommendation

We require three letters of recommendation: two from teachers of the student's choice and one from a secondary school counselor. While a parent may write a letter in place of a secondary school counselor, we prefer that teacher recommendation letters come from external instructors who have taught the student in an academic setting. For example, a community college professor.

Updated on October 24, 2025 1:14 PM