Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies is similar to the Center for Talented Youth at the Johns Hopkins University in terms of certain objectives.

[3] In the early 1960s, Stanford professors Patrick Suppes and Richard C. Atkinson began researching whether computers could be effectively used in schools to teach math and reading to children.

[4] Atkinson eventually left to pursue a career as an administrator (he would retire as president of the University of California), but Suppes stayed.

Later Suppes extended his research to college-level material, and computer-based courses in Logic and Set Theory were offered to Stanford undergraduates from 1972 to 1992.

Suppes, together with a team that included Raymond Ravaglia, the former executive director of EPGY, began work on the course in earnest in 1987.

In April 2006, Stanford received a private donation from the Malone Family Foundation of Englewood, Colorado,[6][7] which funded the establishment of an online high school independent of EPGY's regular distance learning courses.

[10] Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies Summer Institutes are three-week residential programs for academically talented and motivated high school students.

[11] The Summer Institutes provide an opportunity for these students to enrich and accelerate their academic pursuits and to meet others who share their interests and abilities.

These mentors serve a dual role of Residential Counselor and Teaching Assistant so that the academic and social aspects of the program are tightly integrated.

Led by Stanford professors, the Summer Humanities Institute offers intensive courses in history, philosophy, and literature.