High School Diploma
Enroll full time at Courup for a complete American high school education — seven courses a year, small seminars, and a dedicated academic advisor who knows your plan and your progress.
Now Accepting Applications
Rise Together, Reach Further
Courup School is an online American high school for grades 9–12, empowering students in the United States and around the world to excel in a rigorous, personalized, technology-enabled learning environment, and to graduate with more than a US high school diploma.
Our Mission
What Courup is here to do
Courup School exists to give students a serious education without asking them to be in a particular room. We hold a demanding academic standard, keep our classes small enough that no student is anonymous, and treat character and curiosity as things to be taught rather than assumed.
We balance rigorous academics with genuine extracurricular growth — preparing students not only for selective universities, but for the independence that comes after them.
- DemandingA standard we hold, not one we negotiate down
- SmallEight students to a seminar, so nobody is anonymous
- TaughtCharacter and curiosity instructed, never assumed
Enrollment Options
Choose your path to excellence
Two ways to study with us — as a full-time high school student taking seven courses a year, or part time, taking elective courses alongside your current school. For 2026–2027 we are accepting Grade 9 students only, on both paths.
Credit Electives
Take Courup courses alongside your current high school curriculum, in either the fall or spring semester. High achievers get a way to accelerate, and students working to strengthen a subject get the teaching and the credit to do it properly.
The Courup Difference
An education measured in attention
Small classes, specialist faculty, and a catalog deep enough that a student's curiosity is never the limiting factor.
9–12Grades served in the diploma program
1:6Student-to-teacher ratio
100%Faculty holding a master's degree or higher
120+Courses in the four-year catalog
Why Go Online
A real school. Just not a building.
Courup pairs independent, self-paced preparation with live seminars led by a teacher who knows your name — not a library of videos you work through alone. What online lets us do is remove the constraints that have nothing to do with learning: commute times, arbitrary bell schedules, and a course catalog capped by whatever a single building happens to be able to staff.
- Self-paced and live. Students read and research independently to form their own questions, then bring them into seminars capped at eight students to argue them out with specialists and instructors.
- Time-zone aware. Sections run across the Americas, Europe/Africa, and Asia-Pacific windows, so no student is permanently stuck in a 2 a.m. class.
- Taught by specialists. We recruit from the whole world rather than one commuting radius, so the person teaching machine learning has actually built with it.
- Flexible around real life. Training blocks, rehearsals, family travel, and time zones are scheduling inputs, not problems.
Boundless Flexibility
Study from anywhere with a stable connection. Coursework, office hours, and advising all follow you.
Specialist Faculty
Every teacher holds an advanced degree, and many are working practitioners in artificial intelligence, software, data science, economics, and environmental research — so students learn subjects that matter now from the people doing the work.
Purposeful Technology
One clear platform for classes, assignments, feedback, and progress — not a stack of disconnected tools.
Human Support
An academic advisor assigned to every full-time student from the first week, backed by a platform that flags trouble early.
The Curriculum
Seven parts of a Courup education
Our program is designed backward from what universities and adult life actually ask of a graduate: think clearly, write well, work with others, and finish hard things.
Core Education
Requirements across six academic areas — English, Mathematics, Laboratory Sciences, History & Social Science, World Languages, and Visual & Performing Arts — aligned to the University of California A–G framework.
Academic Writing
A four-year writing sequence. Every student writes weekly and receives line-level feedback from a teacher within the week — never an automated score.
Global Perspective
Cross-cultural seminars and collaborative projects that pair students from different countries. Our international student body is treated as a curriculum resource, not a logistics challenge.
Character & Habits
A weekly advisory seminar on time management, study strategy, collaboration, and digital citizenship — the skills independent learning quietly demands.
Interest Pathways
Students concentrate their electives in one or two areas — STEM, Social Science, Humanities, Economics & Business, or Athletics & Performance — for genuine depth.
College Counseling
Counseling begins early with course planning and interest mapping, not in senior year with a panicked essay deadline.
The Courup Project Honors Track
An optional honors track for students who want to graduate with more than a transcript. It is designed around the College Board's AP Capstone program, so that as AP Capstone is introduced, students on the track follow the AP Seminar and AP Research sequence.
- A Grade 9 foundation project, building toward the AP Seminar and AP Research sequence
- One faculty mentor assigned to each student's investigation
- Designed to put the AP Capstone Diploma and Certificate within reach
- Entirely optional — the Courup diploma does not depend on it
A Day in the Life
What a Courup week actually looks like
Live seminars anchor the week. Everything around them — independent work, training, clubs, and project time — moves to fit the student rather than the other way round.
Academics
Two or three live seminars a day, scheduled in your time-zone band. Between them come reading, problem sets, lab write-ups, and drafting. Every seminar is recorded, so a missed class means catching up rather than falling behind.
Student Life
Student-run clubs, debate and Model UN, academic competition teams, student government, community service, and the Courup Project showcase. Optional in-person meetups sit alongside the online calendar.
Support
Advisor check-ins every two weeks, open faculty office hours, and specialist mentoring for project work. All work is graded by the instructor and returned within a week, and families receive a written progress report each term with specifics, not adjectives.
Sample Weekly Schedule
Grade 9 · Social Science pathway · student athlete
Seminars run in 50-minute periods with a 10-minute break between each. English and Mathematics meet three times a week; every other course meets twice, leaving room for the honors project, clubs, seminars, and office hours. Mornings stay deliberately light — two classes, then a long training block — and the school day ends at 5:30 pm.
| Time | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 08:30 – 09:20 | English 9Literature & Composition | Biologywith lab block | English 9 | Biology | English 9 |
| 09:30 – 10:20 | Algebra I | World History& Geography | Algebra I | World History | Algebra I |
| 10:30 – 12:00 | Athletics training — golf, tennis, swimming, or rowing · competition travel accommodated | ||||
| 12:00 – 13:00 | Lunch and break | ||||
| 13:00 – 13:50 | French I | Psychologypathway elective | French I | Psychology | Creative Writingworkshop |
| 14:00 – 14:50 | Creative Writing | Independent study | Faculty office hours | Independent study | Faculty office hours |
| 15:00 – 15:50 | Courup Projecthonors track | Debate Club | Courup Project | Model United Nations | Global Perspectivecross-cultural seminar |
| 16:00 – 16:50 | Independent study — reading, problem sets, and drafting | ||||
| 17:00 – 17:30 | Advisory | Open study | Advisory | Open study | Advisoryweek close |
- Core course (live seminar)
- Pathway elective
- Creative Writing
- Courup Project, clubs & seminars
- Athletics training
- Advisory
- Independent & open study
Illustrative only. Every student's schedule is built individually with an academic advisor around their courses, pathway, time zone, and outside commitments. The training block adapts to the student's sport — golf, tennis, swimming, or rowing — and a student with no training commitment uses that time for independent study or additional coursework.
Your Team
Five assets in every student's corner
Independent learning works when someone is paying attention. At Courup, four people and one system are:
Instructors
Lead your live seminars, grade every piece of your work personally — objective tests included — and hold weekly open office hours. Every one holds a master's degree or higher.
Specialists
Practitioners who teach and mentor in fast-moving fields — artificial intelligence, software engineering, data science, economics, and environmental research — so students meet these subjects as they are today, not as a textbook left them a decade ago.
Academic Advisor
Builds your four-year course plan, meets you every two weeks, and makes sure each year's choices open doors rather than close them.
Wellbeing Counselor
Confidential support for the ordinary and not-so-ordinary difficulties of being a teenager, available to every enrolled student.
The Learning Platform
Our platform reads the signals a remote classroom would otherwise hide. When attendance, submissions, or assessment scores start to slip, it alerts your advisor within days. When a student is pulling ahead, it flags that too, so the response is a harder course rather than a quiet plateau.
Why five, not fifteen
A long list of job titles is easy to say and hard to reach. We would rather focus on a few assets a student actually can use or speak to, and be accountable for them.
Voices
What our families say
Three students on three continents, each of whom reached a classroom that geography had placed out of reach.
“I am on the range by half past ten every morning, and during the season I travel to tournaments most months. My old school counted every one of those days as an absence, and I was forever making up work nobody had actually taught me. At Courup, training is simply a block in my timetable, and when I am away the seminars are recorded. I have not fallen behind once this year.”
David X.Grade 9 · Competitive golfer · China
“I finished primary school in England and my family moved to the United States that same summer. Starting an American high school in a country I had only just arrived in felt like two enormous things at once. Courup let me begin the US curriculum before we had even unpacked, so I found a balance — settling into a new home at my own pace, while already a year into the school system I will apply to university through.”
Albert F.Grade 9 · Recently moved from the United Kingdom
“The schools near us are good at many things, but none of them could give me the advanced coursework I need for American universities. My family could not move abroad and I did not want to board, so for a while I assumed the door was closed. At Courup my teachers simply assume I am aiming for a selective university, and they teach me that way.”
Sitong L.Grade 9 · Aiming for US universities · Spain
Your journey starts now
Courup School uses rolling admission and welcomes students from the United States and around the world. Full-time diploma and part-time elective enrollment are both open.