"What average do you need to get into Stanford?" French families who ask this expect a number, as for a prépa. There is none. Stanford publishes no threshold, does not convert French grades, and does not look at the average alone. A student with an 18 out of 20 average can be turned down, and that happens to the vast majority of applicants, all of them excellent.
What does exist are precise rules, written by the university, which shape how the application should be built. For a student at a French lycée, they come down to a few points.
Stanford and the French baccalaureate: no preferred curriculum
Stanford says so for its international applicants: it has no preference for any specific curriculum, whether A levels, the IB, APs or a national diploma. The French baccalauréat is therefore one curriculum among others. What counts is what the student did with it: the difficulty of the subjects chosen, the results, and how they evolved over the lycée years.
Marks and any predictions must be sent directly by the school, not by the family. A school used to these applications, with a clear school profile and teachers who know how to write an American-style letter, helps a great deal. A school that has never done it needs support.
What GPA or average for Stanford: the real answer
There is no admissions average, but there is a de facto floor: admitted students are at the top of their class, in a demanding curriculum. For a French student, that means very strong results in every subject, and the maths specialism through the final year for any scientific or economic ambition. Above that floor, the other parts of the file make the difference: essays, activities pursued over several years, letters.
The 20-point scale is a reading problem. A 15 out of 20 average, excellent in France, means nothing to an American reader without context. It is up to the school profile and the class ranking to translate it, and that needs preparing with the school well before submission.
Tests, English, dates
The SAT or ACT is required. For early application, the last useful ACT sitting is the end of September and the last SAT the end of October of the final year. Stanford does not, however, require any English proficiency test: applicants may self-report one if they wish. A good student in the French maths specialism can aim for the top of the scale in SAT Math; Reading and Writing takes the most work. I cover both in SAT Math from a French lycée and Taking the SAT from France.
Stanford offers Restrictive Early Action, with a 1 November deadline and a decision in mid-December. "Restrictive" means a student who chooses it cannot apply early to another private university, nor under a binding Early Decision plan to a public one. They remain free to apply anywhere else in Regular Decision, with answers arriving in early April.
Example: the class that entered in 2025. Stanford welcomed 1,866 first-year students, from 64 countries outside the United States. International applicants are present, but in small numbers: every file has to stand out.
Funding: a decisive point for French families
For American applicants, Stanford reviews files without looking at ability to pay. For international applicants, it does not: a request for financial aid is a factor in the evaluation and makes admission more selective. In return, Stanford commits to meeting the demonstrated need of every admitted student, whatever their nationality.
For a French family, the decision to request aid is therefore made at the time of applying, not afterwards. It is a trade-off to make with full knowledge, with a realistic estimate of what the university will consider the family's need.
Building a Stanford application from France
Stanford looks for students who have done something with their curiosity: a project pursued over years, research, a creation, a commitment. That cannot be manufactured in the final year. The essays require personal writing that French schools do not teach; I discuss this in Getting into the Ivy League from France, and the general mechanics are in Do US universities accept the French baccalaureate?
That is what we build with families at Carmine, from age 15 to submission: specialisms, projects, tests, essays, aid strategy and the university list. For maths and the SAT, I prepare students in private lessons.