Kemi Badenoch, UK Conservative Party leader, is under scrutiny as doubt arises over her claim to have been offered admission to a prestigious U.S. medical school at age 16.

Ms Badenoch, who in some interviews claimed she was offered admission and a partial scholarship to study medicine at Stanford University in California, has come under public scrutiny for this assertion.

Contrary to Ms Badenoch’s claim, “medicine is only offered to graduates at Stanford and there is no pre-med degree,” The UK Guardian reported, adding “academic and admissions experts have cast doubt on this, saying it was an impossible scenario.”

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

Mr Reider said that although he admitted a few students from Africa back then, none of them were from Nigeria, Ms Badenoch’s country of birth.

“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,” Mr Reider said.

“I assure you that we would not have admitted a student based on test scores alone, nor would we have mailedaanainvitation to apply to any overseas students based on test scores.”

The former Stanford admissions officer also said, “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.”

Mr Reider explained that Stanford University could not have offered a partial scholarship it could not afford back then, adding that he made all the student selections at the time.

“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,” Mr Reider said.

He added, “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.”

These revelations have sparked calls for the Tory leader to come clean on her claim.

Stanford University, on its website, states: “Stanford does not have a pre-med major. For any of the health professions, you may major in any discipline.”

However, when elected as the Conservative Member of Parliament for Saffron Walden in 2017, Ms Badenoch claimed she gained admission to “Stanford Pre-med School” in an interview with the Huffington Post.

“I had actually got admission into medical school in the U.S. – 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,” she said when asked what she wanted to be when she was 16.

In another interview with The Times in 2024, Ms Badenoch said, “At 16, her US SAT scores won her a partial pre-med scholarship to Stanford, but her family still couldn’t afford the place.”