First-Year Applicants

Check your Junk/Spam/Promotions folders for an email with the subject line "Your Stanford Application." If you still cannot locate the email, it’s possible that your acknowledgment email bounced, and we may only have one email address for you. Please email credentials@stanford.edu with an alternative email address, your Common Application ID number and the email address you used to apply, so that we can resend your acknowledgment email. We recommend using a non-school email address that you check frequently.

Materials may take a week to process after we have received your submitted application, even if your materials were sent before your application was submitted. If your checklist is not complete by the deadline, simply continue to check your Stanford portal regularly until we have received all items. Once we process all materials, we will contact you if you are still missing a required material.

No; due to variation in time zones, your submission timestamp may show a date and time after the deadline. No need to worry. As long as you have received a Stanford acknowledgment email, we have your application.

No; there may be a delay for payments to post to your account (especially for international applicants). As long as you submit your application by the deadline and have the transaction receipt, your application will be received. We will accept the payment when it is posted, and there is no need to worry if the posting is after the deadline. As long as you have received a Stanford acknowledgment email, we have your application.

As a standard practice, we offer a grace period after the application deadline during which teachers and counselors may submit application materials. Please remind your teacher or counselor to submit the materials as soon as possible. Continue to check your Stanford portal until we have received all items.

We only accept required documents, such as transcripts and letters of recommendation, sent from school personnel and recommenders.

We strongly prefer online submission through the Common Application. If your recommender is unable to submit a letter or other required documents online, then they may send the document as an email attachment to credentials@stanford.edu. Please ensure that your full legal name, school name and date of birth are included on the required documents and in the email message.

If you need to have a letter of recommendation emailed to us, please have your recommender also indicate the type of recommendation (e.g., counselor, teacher, optional) in the email.

Your recommender can send their letter as an attachment to credentials@stanford.edu. They should include your full legal name, high school, date of birth and the type of recommendation letter (counselor, teacher, optional) in the email.

If you already listed the teacher or counselor as the Other Recommender in the Common Application, that is completely fine, and we will receive the letter (there's no need to have it re-sent). Please just email credentials@stanford.edu with the name of the recommender and a request for us to update the letter from an optional recommendation to a teacher evaluation or counselor recommendation.

To add new information, such as an award, to your submitted application, please log in to your Stanford portal and complete the Update Application Form in the Updates and Questions section. If you forgot to enter something or discover an error in your application, you can use the same form to explain the correction. We do not add supplementary materials like writing samples, research papers, or other special work to your application file, and we do not offer an option for applicants to upload supplementary materials to their file. If you include links in your application or in the Update Application Form text box in your Stanford portal , there's no guarantee that readers will review these links.

Email credentials@stanford.edu to request a change to your name or date of birth. In addition to the requested correction, please include your Common Application ID, full name, high school and date of birth as submitted in your application. Please note that if you are contacting us about a change to your legal name, you will need to provide verification.

Log in to your Stanford portal and use the "Edit Addresses" feature. Any change you make there will be reflected in your application record. Please note that every applicant must have a permanent address.

Do not send your Social Security number in an email or form. Please call 650-723-2091 to request an update to your Social Security number.

1. Request a change in plan on or before November 1 through the Decision Plan Change form in your Stanford portal .
2. Request a plan change to Regular Decision for any early applications you may have submitted elsewhere.

Request a change in plan on or before December 1 through the Decision Plan Change form in your Stanford portal .

Please note: We cannot honor a change request after December 1 and will evaluate your application under our Restrictive Early Action plan.

To withdraw your application to Stanford, please log in to your Stanford portal and submit the Withdraw Application form.