Programs for Elementary & Middle School Students

Brain Day

“Brain Day” is an annual event in which volunteers from the Neuroscience program take real human brains to middle school classrooms across Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, and Menlo Park. We lead hour-long, hands-on demonstrations in which kids get the chance to see and hold human and animal brains, often for the first time.

Campus Walking Tours

The Stanford Visitor Center offers a range of no-cost tours, exploring the highlights of Stanford’s beautiful campus.

SPLASH

Splash! offers a Saturday or Sunday on campus full of academic and non-academic classes taught by Stanford students. ESP invites students to attend classes that could vary from completely “non-academic” stuff like cookie baking and origami, to complicated and challenging classes on machine theory or quantum mechanics. The Splash! program fee is $40, but generous need-based financial aid is available.

Stanford Math Circle

Math circles are weekly gatherings of high school, middle school, and elementary school students working on problems involving complex and advanced mathematical topics, guided by mathematicians and educators. Fee of $275 per quarter; some financial aid available.

Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies (SPCS)

Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies offers online classes for academically talented youth, residential programs on campus during the summer for high school students, and a fully accredited online high school.  

Stanford seeME

Stanford seeME is an outreach event to introduce young students to engineering! The Mechanical Engineering (ME) department at Stanford opens its doors to high school and middle school students in Spring 2024, where they will learn hands-on engineering from current Stanford students. By connecting middle- and high-school students with little or no background in Engineering, to diverse graduate students who are passionate and eager to teach it, we hope to create meaningful experiences that encourage every participant to explore a potential academic or professional career in Engineering. seeME lets students explore hands-on classes such as: wind energy, driverless cars, predicting the spread of disease, industrial engineering, fire, and data science.