Doubts have surfaced over Kemi Badenoch’s claim to have been offered a place at a prestigious US medical school at 16, with admissions staff unable to recall the proposal and the university not providing the course.

The Conservative leader has said in interviews that she was offered a place and a partial scholarship to study medicine – sometimes describing it as pre-medicine – at Stanford University in California, one of the most competitive in the US.

However, medicine is only offered to graduates at Stanford and there is no pre-med degree.

When asked for clarification, the Conservatives then said Badenoch had not applied but had been offered the place by a number of US universities – including Stanford – on the basis of good exam results in US standardised tests.

But academic and admissions experts have cast doubt on this, saying it was an impossible scenario.

Jon Reider, the Stanford admissions officer at the time of Badenoch’s application who was responsible for international students and the allocation of bursaries, said he would have been responsible for offering Badenoch a place and had not done so. Badenoch moved to the UK from Nigeria aged 16.

“Although 30 years have passed, I would definitely remember if we had admitted a Nigerian student with any financial aid. The answer is that we did not do so,” he said.

Reider said he had admitted a few students based in Africa during that period but not from Nigeria. “I assure you that we would not have admitted a student based on test scores alone, nor would we have mailed an invitation to apply to any overseas students based on test scores,” he said.

He added: “O-levels would not have been sufficient, and we would have been very nervous admitting a 16-year-old. She would have had to have an extraordinary record.”

Reider also revealed it was implausible for a student to be offered a partial scholarship they could not afford to take up.

“If an applicant needed, say, $30,000 a year to attend Stanford, we would offer them the full amount. There was no point in offering them less because they would not have been able to attend. If we admitted them, we wanted them to enrol,” he said. “We were very generous and could offer only about 30 full scholarships a year. Some turned us down for Harvard, Yale. I made the selections myself, subject to the approval of the dean. I was never overruled by any of the three deans for whom I worked.”

The Guardian has also consulted Ivy League admissions coaches, an author specialising in college admissions, several Stanford graduates and an Ivy League vice-provost.

All of those who spoke to the Guardian said they did not believe it was plausible for a place to be offered proactively on exam results alone. One senior US academic said he had never heard of any exemptions – not even for internationally renowned child prodigies or royalty.

Badenoch first mentioned her admission to Stanford in an interview with the Huffington Post in 2017, when she had just been elected as the Conservative MP for Saffron Walden.

Asked what she wanted to be when she was 16, she said: “A doctor, like my parents. Going to a very bad school here stopped me. I had actually got admission into medical school in the US – I got into Stanford pre-med – and I got into medical school in Nigeria but I came here because being a citizen, it was just a lot cheaper.”

Additional detail was given in an interview with the Times in 2024. The interview says: “At 16, her US SAT scores won her a partial pre-med scholarship to Stanford, but her family still couldn’t afford the place.”

The claim that Badenoch had an early offer from Stanford has been mentioned in numerous other newspaper articles. In a profile in the Spectator in 2020, it says Badenoch “won a part-scholarship to Stanford University to study medicine”.

The same claim is made in a profile in the Daily Mail by Lord Ashcroft last year, previewing his biography of Badenoch.

On its website, the university says: “Stanford does not have a pre-med major. For any of the health professions, you may major in any discipline.” Medicine is a graduate degree.

A Conservative party source said it was a common colloquialism to refer to taking a science undergraduate as “pre-med” and that Badenoch was using this terminology having spent time in the US.

After further questions, the Conservative party said Badenoch had not in fact applied directly to Stanford but had received a number of offers from US, UK and Nigerian universities – including Stanford – when she received good SAT results.

A spokesperson for Badenoch said: “Nearly 30 years ago, and aged 16, Kemi was offered a part-scholarship at Stanford that her parents couldn’t afford to take up.

“But, given her subsequent degrees in both engineering and law are a matter of public record, she questions the hysterical efforts to disprove this, from people who showed little interest in probing Rachel Reeves’s hole-filled CV that has contributed to the economic crisis engulfing our country.”

Irena Smith, another former Stanford admissions officer who began there in 1999 and authored the memoir The Golden Ticket, said: “Based on my experience, students with high SAT scores might have been encouraged to apply, but would not have received an offer of admission without completing an application, which would include a list of their activities, teacher letters of recommendation, and multiple essays.

“I have not, however, ever heard of a student being offered a spot at Stanford based on high SAT scores alone, without submitting a full application.”

The Liberal Democrats said Badenoch should reveal the full story behind her apparent offer. A party spokesperson said: “Kemi Badenoch spent months asking questions of the chancellor regarding her CV. It’s now time for her to answer some of her own.”

Badenoch has spoken in the past how she felt she was let down by poor British teaching in her final school years, having moved to the UK as the political situation in Nigeria deteriorated.

Aged 16, she was studying part-time at Phoenix College, a further education college in Morden, achieving a B in biology, a B in chemistry and a D in maths. She says she had previously been a straight-A student but was repeatedly put down and underestimated by teachers at the college and discouraged from applying for medicine or to the University of Oxford.

Stanford University did not return requests for comment.