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Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considered among the most prestigious universities in the world. Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child,
Leland Stanford Jr. Leland Stanford Jr. (May 14, 1868 – March 13, 1884), known as Leland DeWitt Stanford until he was nine, was the only son of American industrialist and politician Leland Stanford and his wife Jane. Following his death from typhoid at age 15, h ...
, who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Leland Stanford was a U.S. senator and former
governor of California The governor of California is the head of government of the U.S. state of California. The governor is the commander-in-chief of the California National Guard and the California State Guard. Established in the Constitution of California, the g ...
who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a coeducational and
non-denominational A non-denominational person or organization is one that does not follow (or is not restricted to) any particular or specific religious denomination. Overview The term has been used in the context of various faiths including Jainism, Baháʼí Fait ...
institution. Stanford University struggled financially after the death of Leland Stanford in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the
1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...
. Following World War II, provost of Stanford Frederick Terman inspired and supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism to build a self-sufficient local industry, which would later be known as the Silicon Valley. The university is organized around seven schools on the same campus: three schools consisting of 40 academic departments at the undergraduate level as well as four professional schools that focus on
graduate programs Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate (bachelor's) degree. The organization and s ...
in law, medicine, education, and business. The university also houses the public policy think tank, the Hoover Institution. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of two private institutions in the Division I FBS
Pac-12 Conference The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its College football, football teams compete in the NCAA D ...
. As of May 26, 2022, Stanford has won 131 NCAA team championships, more than any other university, and was awarded the NACDA Directors' Cup for 25 consecutive years, beginning in 1994–1995. In addition, by 2021, Stanford students and alumni had won at least 296 Olympic medals including 150 gold and 79 silver medals. As of April 2021, 85
Nobel laureates The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make ou ...
, 29 Turing Award laureates, and 8
Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award ho ...
ists have been affiliated with Stanford as students, alumni, faculty, or staff. In addition, Stanford is particularly noted for its entrepreneurship and is one of the most successful universities in attracting funding for
start-ups A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...
. Stanford alumni have founded numerous companies, which combined produce more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue and have created 5.4 million jobs as of 2011, roughly equivalent to the seventh largest economy in the world (). Stanford is the alma mater of U.S. President Herbert Hoover, 74 living billionaires, and 17 astronauts. In academia, its alumni include the current presidents of Yale and MIT and the provosts of Harvard and Princeton. It is also one of the leading producers of Fulbright Scholars, Marshall Scholars,
Rhodes Scholars The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...
, and members of the United States Congress.


History

Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford, dedicated to the memory of Leland Stanford Jr, their only child. The institution opened in 1891 on Stanford's previous Palo Alto farm. Jane and Leland Stanford modeled their university after the great eastern universities, most specifically Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Stanford was referred to as the "Cornell of the West" in 1891 due to a majority of its faculty being former Cornell affiliates (professors, alumni, or both), including its first president,
David Starr Jordan David Starr Jordan (January 19, 1851 – September 19, 1931) was the founding president of Stanford University, serving from 1891 to 1913. He was an ichthyologist during his research career. Prior to serving as president of Stanford Univer ...
, and second president,
John Casper Branner John Casper Branner (July 4, 1850 – March 1, 1922)Memorial Res ...
. Both Cornell and Stanford were among the first to make higher education accessible, non-sectarian, and open to women as well as men. Cornell is credited as one of the first American universities to adopt that radical departure from traditional education, and Stanford became an early adopter as well. From an architectural point of view, the Stanfords, particularly Jane, wanted their university to look different from the eastern ones, which had often sought to emulate the style of English university buildings. They specified in the founding grant that the buildings should "be like the old adobe houses of the early Spanish days; they will be one-storied; they will have deep window seats and open fireplaces, and the roofs will be covered with the familiar dark red tiles". This guides the campus buildings to this day. The Stanfords also hired renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who previously designed the Cornell campus, to design the Stanford campus. When Leland Stanford died in 1893, the continued existence of the university was in jeopardy due to a federal lawsuit against his estate, but Jane Stanford insisted the university remain in operation throughout the financial crisis. The university suffered major damage from the
1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...
; most of the damage was repaired, but a new library and gymnasium were demolished, and some original features of Memorial Church and the
Quad Quad as a word or prefix usually means 'four'. It may refer to: Government * Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a strategic security dialogue between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States * Quadrilateral group, an informal group which inc ...
were never restored. During the early 20th century, the university added four professional graduate schools.
Stanford University School of Medicine Stanford University School of Medicine is the medical school of Stanford University and is located in Stanford, California. It traces its roots to the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, founded in San Francisco in 1858. This ...
was established in 1908 when the university acquired
Cooper Medical College Stanford University School of Medicine is the medical school of Stanford University and is located in Stanford, California. It traces its roots to the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, founded in San Francisco in 1858. This ...
in San Francisco; it moved to the Stanford campus in 1959. The university's law department, established as an undergraduate curriculum in 1893, was transitioned into a professional
law school A law school (also known as a law centre or college of law) is an institution specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for becoming a lawyer within a given jurisdiction. Law degrees Argentina In Argentina, ...
starting in 1908 and received accreditation from the American Bar Association in 1923. The
Stanford Graduate School of Education The Stanford Graduate School of Education (also known as Stanford GSE, or GSE) is one of the seven schools of Stanford University, and is one of the top education schools in the United States. It was founded in 1891 and offers master's and doc ...
grew out of the Department of the History and Art of Education, one of the original 21 departments at Stanford, and became a professional graduate school in 1917. The
Stanford Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business (also known as Stanford GSB) is the graduate business school of Stanford University, a private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective business schoo ...
was founded in 1925 at the urging of then-trustee Herbert Hoover. In 1919, The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace was started by Herbert Hoover to preserve artifacts related to World War I. The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), established in 1962, performs research in particle physics. In the 1940s and 1950s, an engineering professor and later provost Frederick Terman encouraged Stanford engineering graduates to invent products and start their own companies. During the 1950s, he established
Stanford Industrial Park Stanford Research Park (SRP) is a technology park established in 1951 as a joint initiative between Stanford University and the Palo Alto, California, City of Palo Alto. It has more than 150 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Tesla Motors, TIB ...
, a high-tech commercial campus on university land. Also in the 1950s William Shockley, co-inventor of the silicon transistor, recipient of the 1956 Nobel Prize for Physics, and later professor of physics at Stanford, moved to the Palo Alto area and founded a company, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. The next year eight of his employees resigned and formed a competing company,
Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. Founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument, it became a pioneer in the manufacturing of transistors and of int ...
. The presence of so many high-tech and semiconductor firms helped to establish Stanford and the mid-
Peninsula A peninsula (; ) is a landform that extends from a mainland and is surrounded by water on most, but not all of its borders. A peninsula is also sometimes defined as a piece of land bordered by water on three of its sides. Peninsulas exist on all ...
as a hotbed of innovation, eventually named Silicon Valley after the key ingredient in transistors. Shockley and Terman are often described, separately or jointly, as the "fathers of Silicon Valley". Stanford limited Jewish student admissions during the 1950s. Stanford in the 1960s rose from a regional university to one of the most prestigious in the United States, "when it appeared on lists of the "top ten" universities in America... This swift rise to performance asunderstood at the time as related directly to the university's defense contracts..." In the following decades, however, controversies would damage the reputation of the school. The 1971
Stanford prison experiment The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was a psychological experiment conducted in the summer of 1971. It was a two-week simulation A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulati ...
was criticized as unethical, and the misuse of government funds from 1981 resulted in severe penalties to the school's research funding and the resignation of Stanford President Donald Kennedy in 1992.


Land

Most of Stanford is on an campus, one of the largest in the United States. It is on the San Francisco Peninsula, in the northwest part of the Santa Clara Valley ( Silicon Valley) approximately southeast of San Francisco and approximately northwest of San Jose. $4.5 billion was received by Stanford in 2006 and spent more than $2.1 billion in 2 counties named Santa Clara, and San Mateo. In 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped. Stanford's main campus includes a census-designated place within unincorporated Santa Clara County, although some of the university land (such as the Stanford Shopping Center and the
Stanford Research Park Stanford Research Park (SRP) is a technology park established in 1951 as a joint initiative between Stanford University and the City of Palo Alto. It has more than 150 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Tesla Motors, TIBCO and VMware; previous ...
) is within the city limits of Palo Alto. The campus also includes much land in unincorporated San Mateo County (including the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the
Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve The Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a nature preserve and biological field station formally established as a reserve in 1973. The biological preserve is owned by Stanford University, and is located at south of Sand Hill Road and west of Int ...
), as well as in the city limits of Menlo Park (Stanford Hills neighborhood),
Woodside Woodside may refer to: Places and buildings Australia *Woodside, South Australia, a town *Woodside, Victoria, a town Canada *Woodside National Historic Site, the boyhood home of William Lyon Mackenzie King *Woodside, Nova Scotia, a neighborho ...
, and
Portola Valley Portola Valley is a town in San Mateo County, California. Located on the San Francisco Peninsula in the Bay Area, Portola Valley is a small, wealthy community nestled on the eastern slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains. History Portola Va ...
. The central campus includes a seasonal lake ( Lake Lagunita, actually an irrigation reservoir), home to the vulnerable California tiger salamander. As of 2012 Lake Lagunita was often dry and the university had no plans to artificially fill it. Two other reservoirs, Searsville Lake on San Francisquito Creek and Felt Lake, are on more remote sections of the founding grant.


Central campus

The central academic campus is adjacent to Palo Alto, bounded by El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue, Jane Stanford Way, and Sand Hill Road. The United States Postal Service has assigned it two ZIP Codes: 94305 for campus mail and 94309 for P.O. box mail. It lies within
area code 650 Area code 650 is a telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It was split from area code 415 on August 2, 1997, and includes most of San Mateo County (except t ...
.


Non-central campus

Stanford currently operates in various locations outside of its central campus. On the founding grant: *
Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve The Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a nature preserve and biological field station formally established as a reserve in 1973. The biological preserve is owned by Stanford University, and is located at south of Sand Hill Road and west of Int ...
is a natural reserve south of the central campus owned by the university and used by wildlife biologists for research. Researchers and students are involved in biological research. Professors can teach the importance of biological research to the biological community. The primary goal is to understand the system of the natural Earth. * SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is a facility west of the central campus operated by the university for the Department of Energy. It contains the longest linear particle accelerator in the world, on of land. Off the founding grant: * Hopkins Marine Station, in Pacific Grove, California, is a
marine biology Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms in the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies s ...
research center owned by the university since 1892. Based on US Pacific Coast, it is one of the oldest marine laboratories. It includes 10 research laboratories and is also used for archaeological exploration purposes. A graduate student of the anthropology department discover some broken elements, which leads to proof that 100 years before it was home to a Chinese American fishing village. * Study abroad locations: unlike typical
study abroad International students, or foreign students, are students who undertake all or part of their tertiary education in a country other than their own and move to that country for the purpose of studying. In 2019, there were over 6 million internati ...
programs, Stanford itself operates in several locations around the world; thus, each location has Stanford faculty-in-residence and staff in addition to students, creating a "mini-Stanford." * Redwood City campus for many of the university's administrative offices in Redwood City, California, a few miles north of the main campus. In 2005, the university purchased a small, campus in Midpoint Technology Park intended for staff offices; development was delayed by The Great Recession. In 2015 the university announced a development plan and the Redwood City campus opened in March 2019. * The Bass Center in Washington, D.C. provides a base, including housing, for the Stanford in Washington program for undergraduates. It includes a small art gallery open to the public. * China: Stanford Center at Peking University, housed in the Lee Jung Sen Building, is a small center for researchers and students in collaboration with
Peking University Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charter ...
.


Faculty residences

Many Stanford faculty members live in the "Faculty Ghetto," within walking or biking distance of campus. The Faculty Ghetto is composed of land owned by Stanford. Similar to a
condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership structure whereby a building is divided into several units that are each separately owned, surrounded by common areas that are jointly owned. The term can be applied to the building or complex ...
, the houses can be bought and sold but the land under the houses is rented on a 99-year lease. Houses in the "Ghetto" appreciate and depreciate, but not as rapidly as overall Silicon Valley values. For faculty housing there are some changes that come from the date February 1, 2022.


Other uses

Some of the land is managed to provide revenue for the university such as the Stanford Shopping Center and the
Stanford Research Park Stanford Research Park (SRP) is a technology park established in 1951 as a joint initiative between Stanford University and the City of Palo Alto. It has more than 150 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Tesla Motors, TIBCO and VMware; previous ...
. Stanford land is also leased for a token rent by the Palo Alto Unified School District for several schools including
Palo Alto High School Palo Alto Senior High School, commonly referred to locally as "Paly", is a comprehensive public high school in Palo Alto, California. Operated by the Palo Alto Unified School District, the school is one of two schools in the district, the other b ...
and Gunn High School. El Camino Park, the oldest Palo Alto city park (established 1914), is also on Stanford land. Stanford also has the Stanford Golf Course and Stanford Red Barn Equestrian Center used by Stanford athletics though the golf course can also be used by the general public.


Landmarks

Contemporary campus landmarks include the Main Quad and Memorial Church, the
Cantor Center for Visual Arts The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, formerly the Stanford University Museum of Art, and commonly known as the Cantor Arts Center, is an art museum on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California. ...
and the
Bing Concert Hall Bing Concert Hall is a performing arts facility at Stanford University that opened in January 2013. The heart of the building is the oval-shaped concert hall, which has 842 seats arranged in a vineyard style surrounding the stage in terraces. ...
, the
Stanford Mausoleum The Stanford Mausoleum, located in the Northwest of the Stanford University campus in the Stanford University Arboretum, holds the remains of the university's namesake Leland Stanford, Jr. and his parents Leland and Jane Stanford. Once per yea ...
with the nearby Angel of Grief, Hoover Tower, the Rodin Sculpture Garden, the
Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden In 1994, Jim Mason, a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University, arranged for two groups of men from the Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea to carve the New Guinea Sculpture Garden at Stanford University. ...
, the
Arizona Cactus Garden The Arizona Cactus Garden, or, officially, Arizona Garden, also known as the Cactus Garden, is a small botanical garden specializing in cactus and succulents. It is located on the campus of Stanford University (within the Stanford University A ...
, the
Stanford University Arboretum The Stanford University Arboretum is an arboretum located on the grounds of Stanford University in Stanford, California. It is open to the public daily without charge. Background The arboretum began with the indigenous live oaks on Leland Sta ...
,
Green Library The Cecil H. Green Library (commonly known as Green Library) is the main library on the Stanford University campus and is part of the SUL system. It is named for Cecil H. Green. Green Library houses 4 million volumes, most of which are relate ...
and the Dish. Frank Lloyd Wright's 1937 Hanna–Honeycomb House and the 1919 Lou Henry Hoover House are both listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
White Memorial Fountain White Memorial Fountain, also known as ''The Claw'', is a fountain by Aristides Demetrios on the Stanford University campus in Stanford, California, United States. It was installed in 1964, and Demetrios returned to restore the fountain in 2011. I ...
(also known as "The Claw") between the Stanford Bookstore and the Old Union is a popular place to meet and to engage in the Stanford custom of "fountain hopping"; it was installed in 1964 and designed by Aristides Demetrios after a national competition as a memorial for two brothers in the class of 1949, William N. White and John B. White II, one of whom died before graduating and one shortly after in 1952. Has information on the White brothers that slightly corrects some of the facts in other articles. File:Stanford Memorial Church Interior 2.jpg, Interior of the Stanford Memorial Church at the center of the Main Quad File:Stanford University Hoover Tower.JPG, Hoover Tower, at , the tallest building on campus File:Stanstadium view.jpg, The new (2006) Stanford Stadium, site of home football games File:Stanford University Arches with Memorial Church in the background.jpg, Stanford Quad with Memorial Church in the background File:The Dish, Stanford University.jpg, The Dish, a diameter radio telescope on the Stanford foothills overlooking the main campus File:Claw Fountain at Stanford Univerisity.JPG,
White Memorial Fountain White Memorial Fountain, also known as ''The Claw'', is a fountain by Aristides Demetrios on the Stanford University campus in Stanford, California, United States. It was installed in 1964, and Demetrios returned to restore the fountain in 2011. I ...
(The Claw)


Administration and organization

Stanford is a private, non-profit university administered as a corporate trust governed by a privately appointed
board of trustees A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...
with a maximum membership of 38. Trustees serve five-year terms (not more than two consecutive terms) and meet five times annually. A new trustee is chosen by the current trustees by ballot. The Stanford trustees also oversee the
Stanford Research Park Stanford Research Park (SRP) is a technology park established in 1951 as a joint initiative between Stanford University and the City of Palo Alto. It has more than 150 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Tesla Motors, TIBCO and VMware; previous ...
, the Stanford Shopping Center, the
Cantor Center for Visual Arts The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, formerly the Stanford University Museum of Art, and commonly known as the Cantor Arts Center, is an art museum on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California. ...
,
Stanford University Medical Center Stanford University Medical Center is a medical complex which includes Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children's Health. It is consistently ranked as one of the best hospitals in the United States and serves as a teaching hospital for the ...
, and many associated medical facilities (including the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital). The board appoints a president to serve as the chief executive officer of the university, to prescribe the duties of professors and course of study, to manage financial and business affairs, and to appoint nine vice presidents. The 11th and current president of Stanford University is
Marc Trevor Tessier-Lavigne Marc Trevor Tessier-Lavigne (born December 18, 1959) is a Canadian-American neuroscientist who is the 11th and current president of Stanford University. Previously, he was a professor at the University of California, San Francisco and then pre ...
, a Canadian-born neuroscientist. The provost is the chief academic and budget officer, to whom the deans of each of the seven schools report. Persis Drell became the 13th provost in February 2017. As of 2018, the university was organized into seven academic schools. The schools of Humanities and Sciences (27 departments), Engineering (nine departments), and Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (four departments) have both graduate and undergraduate programs while the Schools of Law, Medicine, Education, and
Business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...
, have graduate programs only. A new School of Sustainability will supersede the School of Earth, Energy, & Environmental Sciences in September 2022. The powers and authority of the faculty are vested in the Academic Council, which is made up of tenure and non-tenure line faculty, research faculty, senior fellows in some policy centers and institutes, the president of the university, and some other academic administrators. But most matters are handled by the Faculty Senate, made up of 54 elected representatives of the faculty for the year 2021–22. The Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) is the student government for Stanford and all registered students are members. Its elected leadership consists of the Undergraduate Senate elected by the undergraduate students, the Graduate Student Council elected by the graduate students, and the President and Vice President elected as a ticket by the entire student body. Stanford is the beneficiary of a special clause in the
California Constitution The Constitution of California ( es, Constitución de California) is the primary organizing law for the U.S. state of California, describing the duties, powers, structures and functions of the government of California. California's original co ...
, which explicitly exempts Stanford property from taxation so long as the property is used for educational purposes.


Endowment and donations

The university's
endowment Endowment most often refers to: *A term for human penis size It may also refer to: Finance *Financial endowment, pertaining to funds or property donated to institutions or individuals (e.g., college endowment) *Endowment mortgage, a mortgage to b ...
, managed by the Stanford Management Company, was valued at $36.3 billion as of August 31, 2022. Payouts from the Stanford endowment covered approximately 21% of university expenses in the 2022 fiscal year. In the 2018 NACUBO- TIAA survey of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, only Harvard University, the University of Texas System, and Yale University had larger endowments than Stanford. In 2006, President John L. Hennessy launched a five-year campaign called the Stanford Challenge, which reached its $4.3 billion fundraising goal in 2009, two years ahead of time, but continued fundraising for the duration of the campaign. It concluded on December 31, 2011, having raised $6.23 billion and breaking the previous campaign fundraising record of $3.88 billion held by Yale. Specifically, the campaign raised $253.7 million for undergraduate financial aid, as well as $2.33 billion for its initiative in "Seeking Solutions" to global problems, $1.61 billion for "Educating Leaders" by improving K-12 education, and $2.11 billion for "Foundation of Excellence" aimed at providing academic support for Stanford students and faculty. Funds supported 366 new fellowships for graduate students, 139 new endowed chairs for faculty, and 38 new or renovated buildings. The new funding also enabled the construction of a facility for stem cell research; a new campus for the business school; an expansion of the law school; a new Engineering Quad; a new art and art history building; an on-campus concert hall; the new Cantor Arts Center; and a planned expansion of the medical school, among other things. In 2012, the university raised $1.035 billion, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year. In April 2022, Stanford University announced a $75 million donation, in support of a multidisciplinary neurodegenerative brain disease research initiative at the university's Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. The donation came from Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny; hence The Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience will explore cognitive declines from diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.


Academics


Admissions

Stanford is considered by '' US News'' to be 'most selective', with an acceptance rate of 4%. Half of the applicants accepted to Stanford have an SAT score between 1440 and 1570 or an ACT score of 32 and 35. Admissions officials consider a student's GPA to be an important academic factor, with emphasis on an applicant's high school class rank and letters of recommendation. In terms of non-academic materials as of 2019, Stanford ranks extracurricular activities, talent/ability and character/personal qualities as 'very important' in making first-time, first-year admission decisions, while ranking the interview, whether the applicant is a first-generation university applicant, legacy preferences, volunteer work and work experience as 'considered'.


Teaching and learning

Stanford follows a quarter system with the autumn quarter usually beginning in late September and the spring quarter ending in mid-June. The full-time, four-year undergraduate program has arts and sciences focus with high graduate student coexistence. Stanford is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Stanford's admission process is need-blind for U.S. citizens and permanent residents; while it is not need-blind for international students, 64% are on need-based aid, with an average aid package of $31,411. In 2012–13, the university awarded $126 million in need-based financial aid to 3,485 students, with an average aid package of $40,460. Eighty percent of students receive some form of financial aid. Stanford has a no-loan policy. For undergraduates admitted starting in 2015, Stanford waives tuition, room, and board for most families with incomes below $65,000, and most families with incomes below $125,000 are not required to pay tuition; those with incomes up to $150,000 may have tuition significantly reduced. Seventeen percent of students receive Pell Grants, a common measure of low-income students at a college. In 2022, Stanford started its first dual-enrollment computer science program for high school students from low-income communities as a pilot project which then inspired the founding of the Qualia Global Scholars Program. Stanford plans to expand the program to include courses in Structured Liberal Education and writing. The Cantonese language had classes at Stanford until 2020, when the remaining Cantonese instructor was laid off.


Research centers and institutes

Stanford is
classified Classified may refer to: General *Classified information, material that a government body deems to be sensitive *Classified advertising or "classifieds" Music *Classified (rapper) (born 1977), Canadian rapper *The Classified, a 1980s American roc ...
among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity." The university's research expenditure in fiscal year 2021 was $1.69 billion and total sponsored projects was 7,900+. As of 2016 the Office of the Vice Provost and Dean of Research oversaw eighteen independent laboratories, centers, and institutes. Dr. Kathryn Ann Moler is the key person for leading those research centers for choosing problems, faculty members, and students. Funding is also provided for undergraduate and graduate students by those labs, centers, and institutes for collaborative research. Other Stanford-affiliated institutions include the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (originally the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), the Stanford Research Institute (an independent institution which originated at the university), the Hoover Institution (a conservative think tank) and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (a multidisciplinary design school in cooperation with the Hasso Plattner Institute of University of Potsdam that integrates product design, engineering, and business management education). Stanford is home to the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute which grew out of and still contains the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project, a collaboration with the King Center to publish the King papers held by the King Center. It also runs the John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists and the Center for Ocean Solutions, which brings together marine science and policy to address challenges facing the ocean. It focuses mainly 5 points, such as climate change, overfishing, coastal development, pollution and plastics. Together with UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, Stanford is part of the Biohub, a new medical science research center founded in 2016 by a $600 million commitment from Facebook CEO and founder
Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), o ...
and pediatrician Priscilla Chan. This medical research center is working for designing advanced-level health care units.


Libraries and digital resources

As of 2014,
Stanford University Libraries The Stanford University Libraries (SUL), formerly known as "Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources" ("SULAIR"), is the library system of Stanford University in California. It encompasses more than 24 libraries in all. Sev ...
(SUL) has 24 libraries in total. The
Hoover Institution Library and Archives The Hoover Institution Library and Archives is a research center and archival repository located at Stanford University, near Palo Alto, California in the United States. Built around a collection amassed by Stanford graduate Herbert Hoover prio ...
is a research center based on history of 20th century.
Stanford University Libraries The Stanford University Libraries (SUL), formerly known as "Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources" ("SULAIR"), is the library system of Stanford University in California. It encompasses more than 24 libraries in all. Sev ...
(SUL) held a collection of more than 9.3 million volumes, nearly 300,000 rare or special books, 1.5 million e-books, 2.5 million audiovisual materials, 77,000 serials, nearly 6 million microform holdings, thousands of other digital resources. and 516,620 journal, 526,414 images, 11,000 software collection, 1,00,000 videos etc. . The main library in the SU library system is the
Green Library The Cecil H. Green Library (commonly known as Green Library) is the main library on the Stanford University campus and is part of the SUL system. It is named for Cecil H. Green. Green Library houses 4 million volumes, most of which are relate ...
, which also contains various meeting and conference rooms, study spaces, and reading rooms. Lathrop Library (previously Meyer Library, demolished in 2015), holds various student-accessible media resources and houses one of the largest East Asia collections with 540,000 volumes. Stanford University Press was founded in 1892. It published about 130 books per year has printed more than 3,000 books. It also has fifteen subject areas.


Arts

Stanford is home to the
Cantor Center for Visual Arts The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, formerly the Stanford University Museum of Art, and commonly known as the Cantor Arts Center, is an art museum on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California. ...
, a museum with 24 galleries, sculpture gardens, terraces, and a courtyard first established in 1891 by Jane and Leland Stanford as a memorial to their only child. The center's collection of works by Rodin is among the largest in the world. The Thomas Welton Stanford Gallery, which was built in 1917, serves as a teaching resource for the Department of Art & Art History as well as an exhibition venue. In 2014, Stanford opened the Anderson Collection, a new museum focused on postwar American art and founded by the donation of 121 works by food service moguls Mary and Harry Anderson. There are outdoor art installations throughout the campus, primarily sculptures, but some murals as well. The Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden near Roble Hall features includes wood carvings and " totem poles." The Stanford music department sponsors many ensembles including five choirs, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra,
Stanford Taiko Stanford Taiko is a collegiate taiko group based at Stanford University. One of the first collegiate taiko groups to form in North America, it was founded in the winter of 1992 by students Ann Ishimaru and Valerie Mih as a way to share taiko with ...
, and the Stanford Wind Ensemble. Extracurricular activities include theater groups such as Ram's Head Theatrical Society, the Stanford Improvisors, the Stanford Shakespeare Company, and the Stanford Savoyards, a group dedicated to performing the works of
Gilbert and Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian era, Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ...
. Stanford is also host to ten ''a cappella'' groups, including the Mendicants (Stanford's first),
Counterpoint In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...
(the first all-female group on the
West Coast West Coast or west coast may refer to: Geography Australia * Western Australia *Regions of South Australia#Weather forecasting, West Coast of South Australia * West Coast, Tasmania **West Coast Range, mountain range in the region Canada * Britis ...
), the Harmonics, the Stanford Fleet Street Singers, Talisman, Everyday People, and Raagapella.


Reputation and rankings

''
Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'' in 2014 dubbed Stanford as "the Harvard of the 21st century". In the same year '' The New York Times'' dubbed Harvard as the "Stanford of the East". In that article titled ''To Young Minds of Today, Harvard Is the Stanford of the East'' '' The New York Times'' concluded that "Stanford University has become America's 'it' school, by measures that Harvard once dominated." In 2019, Stanford University took 1st place on Reuters' list of the ''World's Most Innovative Universities'' for the fifth consecutive year. In 2022, '' Washington Monthly'' ranked Stanford at 1st position in their annual list of top universities in USA. In a 2022 survey by '' The Princeton Review'', Stanford was ranked 1st among the top ten "dream colleges" of America, and was considered to be the ultimate "dream college" of both students and parents.
Stanford Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business (also known as Stanford GSB) is the graduate business school of Stanford University, a private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective business schoo ...
was ranked 1st in the list of America's best business schools by ''Bloomberg'' for 2022-23. From polls of college applicants done by The Princeton Review, every year from 2013 to 2020 the most commonly named "dream college" for students was Stanford; separately, parents, too, most frequently named Stanford their ultimate "dream college." Globally Stanford is also ranked among the top universities in the world (see infoboxes above). The ''
Academic Ranking of World Universities The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' (''ARWU''), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong University ...
(ARWU)'' ranked Stanford second in the world (after Harvard) most years from 2003 to 2020. '' Times Higher Education'' recognizes Stanford as one of the world's "six super brands" on its ''World Reputation Rankings'', along with Berkeley, Cambridge,
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, MIT, and Oxford.


Discoveries and innovation


Natural sciences

*
Biological synthesis Biosynthesis is a multi-step, enzyme-catalyzed process where substrates are converted into more complex products in living organisms. In biosynthesis, simple compounds are modified, converted into other compounds, or joined to form macromolecules. ...
of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) – Arthur Kornberg discovered the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1959 for his work at Stanford. By studying bacteria, Kornberg succeeded in isolating DNA polymerase in 1956–an enzyme that is active in the formation of DNA. * First Transgenic organismStanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer were the first scientists to transplant genes from one living organism to another, a fundamental discovery for genetic engineering. Thousands of products have been developed on the basis of their work, including
human growth hormone Growth hormone (GH) or somatotropin, also known as human growth hormone (hGH or HGH) in its human form, is a peptide hormone that stimulates growth, cell reproduction, and cell regeneration in humans and other animals. It is thus important in h ...
and hepatitis B vaccine. * LaserArthur Leonard Schawlow shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn for his work on lasers. * Nuclear magnetic resonanceFelix Bloch developed new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements, which are the underlying principles of the MRI.


Computer and applied sciences

* ARPANETStanford Research Institute, formerly part of Stanford but on a separate campus, was the site of one of the four original ARPANET nodes. In the early 1970s, Bob Kahn & Vint Cerf's research project about Internetworking, later DARPA formulated it to the TCP(Transmission Control Program). * Internet—Stanford was the site where the original design of the Internet was undertaken. Vint Cerf led a research group to elaborate the design of the Transmission Control Protocol ( TCP/IP) that he originally co-created with Robert E. Kahn ( Bob Kahn) in 1973 and which formed the basis for the architecture of the Internet. *
Frequency modulation synthesis Frequency modulation synthesis (or FM synthesis) is a form of sound synthesis whereby the frequency of a waveform is changed by modulating its frequency with a modulator. The frequency of an oscillator is altered "in accordance with the amplitude ...
John Chowning of the Music department invented the FM music synthesis algorithm in 1967, and Stanford later licensed it to Yamaha Corporation. * Google – Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford. They were working on the
Stanford Digital Library Project The Stanford Digital Library Project (SDLP) (also called The Stanford Integrated Digital Library Project and The Stanford Digital Library Technologies Project) was a research program run by Hector Garcia-Molina, Terry Winograd, Dan Boneh, and Andr ...
(SDLP) which is started in 1999. The SDLP's goal was "to develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated and universal digital library" and it was funded through the National Science Foundation, among other federal agencies. * Klystron tube – invented by the brothers Russell and Sigurd Varian at Stanford. Their prototype was completed and demonstrated successfully on August 30, 1937. Upon publication in 1939, news of the klystron immediately influenced the work of U.S. and UK researchers working on radar equipment. *
RISC In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set comput ...
ARPA funded VLSI project of microprocessor design. Stanford and UC Berkeley are most associated with the popularization of this concept. The
Stanford MIPS MIPS, an acronym for Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages, was a research project conducted by John L. Hennessy at Stanford University between 1981 and 1984. MIPS investigated a type of instruction set architecture (ISA) now called ...
would go on to be commercialized as the successful MIPS architecture, while Berkeley RISC gave its name to the entire concept, commercialized as the SPARC. Another success from this era were IBM's efforts that eventually led to the IBM POWER instruction set architecture,
PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...
, and
Power ISA Power ISA is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) currently developed by the OpenPOWER Foundation, led by IBM. It was originally developed by IBM and the now-defunct Power.org industry group. Power IS ...
. As these projects matured, a wide variety of similar designs flourished in the late 1980s and especially the early 1990s, representing a major force in the Unix workstation market as well as embedded processors in laser printers, routers and similar products. * SUN workstation
Andy Bechtolsheim Andreas Maria Maximilian Freiherr von Mauchenheim genannt Bechtolsheim (born 30 September 1955) is a German electrical engineer, entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer. His net worth ...
designed the SUN workstation, for the
Stanford University Network The Stanford University Network, also known as SUN, SUNet or SU-Net is the campus computer network for Stanford University. History Stanford Research Institute, formerly part of Stanford but on a separate campus, was the site of one of the four or ...
communications project as a personal CAD workstation, which led to
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...
.


Businesses and entrepreneurship

Stanford is one of the most successful universities in creating companies and licensing its inventions to existing companies, and it is often considered a model for technology transfer.Nigel Page
The Making of a Licensing Legend: Stanford University’s Office of Technology Licensing
. Chapter 17.13 in Sharing the Art of IP Management. Globe White Page Ltd, London, U.K. 2007
Timothy Lenoir. Inventing the entrepreneurial university: Stanford and the co-evolution of Silicon Valley pp. 88–128 in Building Technology Transfer within Research Universities: An Entrepreneurial Approach Edited by Thomas J. Allen and Rory P. O'Shea. Cambridge University Press, 2014. Stanford's Office of Technology Licensing is responsible for commercializing university research, intellectual property, and university-developed projects. The university is described as having a strong venture culture in which students are encouraged, and often
funded Funding is the act of providing resources to finance a need, program, or project. While this is usually in the form of money, it can also take the form of effort or time from an organization or company. Generally, this word is used when a firm uses ...
, to launch their own companies. Companies founded by Stanford alumni generate more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue and have created some 5.4 million jobs since the 1930s. When combined, these companies would form the tenth-largest economy in the world. Some companies closely associated with Stanford and their connections include: *
Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
, 1939: co-founders
William R. Hewlett William Redington Hewlett ( ; May 20, 1913 – January 12, 2001) was an American engineer and the co-founder, with David Packard, of the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP). Early life and education Hewlett was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his ...
(B.S, PhD) and David Packard (M.S) * Silicon Graphics, 1981: co-founders James H. Clark (Associate Professor) and several of his graduate students *
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...
, 1982: co-founders Vinod Khosla (M.B.A),
Andy Bechtolsheim Andreas Maria Maximilian Freiherr von Mauchenheim genannt Bechtolsheim (born 30 September 1955) is a German electrical engineer, entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer. His net worth ...
(PhD) and Scott McNealy (M.B.A) * Cisco, 1984: co-founders Leonard Bosack (M.S) and Sandy Lerner (M.S) were in charge of the Stanford Computer Science and the Graduate School of Business computer operations groups, respectively, when the hardware was developed * Yahoo!, 1994: co-founders
Jerry Yang Jerry Chih-Yuan Yang (born November 6, 1968) is a Taiwanese-American billionaire computer programmer, internet entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc. As of February 2022, Yang has a net worth ...
(B.S, M.S) and
David Filo David Robert Filo (born April 20, 1966) is an American billionaire businessman and the co-founder of Yahoo! with Jerry Yang. His Filo Server Program, written in the C programming language, was the server-side software used to dynamically serve ...
(M.S) * Google, 1998: co-founders Larry Page (M.S) and Sergey Brin (M.S) * LinkedIn, 2002: co-founders Reid Hoffman (B.S), Konstantin Guericke (B.S, M.S), Eric Lee (B.S), and Alan Liu (B.S) *
Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...
, 2010: co-founders Kevin Systrom (B.S) and Mike Krieger (B.S) *
Snapchat Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before the ...
, 2011: co-founders Evan Spiegel (B.S), Reggie Brown (B.S) and Bobby Murphy (B.S) * Coursera, 2012: co-founders Andrew Ng (Associate Professor) and Daphne Koller (Professor, PhD)


Student life


Student body

Stanford enrolled 6,996 undergraduate and 10,253 graduate students as of the 2019–2020 school year. Women made up 50.4% of undergraduates and 41.5% of graduate students. In the same academic year, the freshman retention rate was 99%. Stanford awarded 1,819 undergraduate degrees, 2,393 master's degrees, 770 doctoral degrees, and 3270 professional degrees in the 2018–2019 school year. The four-year graduation rate for the class of 2017 cohort was 72.9%, and the six-year rate was 94.4%. The relatively low four-year graduation rate is a function of the university's coterminal degree (or "coterm") program, which allows students to earn a master's degree as a 1-to-2-year extension of their undergraduate program. As of 2010, fifteen percent of undergraduates were first-generation students.


Dormitories and student housing

As of 2013, 89% of undergraduate students lived in on-campus university housing. First-year undergraduates are required to live on campus, and all undergraduates are guaranteed housing for all four undergraduate years. Undergraduates live in 80 different houses, including dormitories, co-ops,
row houses In architecture and city planning, a terrace or terraced house ( UK) or townhouse ( US) is a form of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, whereby a row of attached dwellings share side walls. In the United State ...
, and fraternities and sororities. At Manzanita Park, 118
mobile home A mobile home (also known as a house trailer, park home, trailer, or trailer home) is a prefabricated structure, built in a factory on a permanently attached chassis before being transported to site (either by being towed or on a trailer). Us ...
s were installed as "temporary" housing from 1969 to 1991, but as of 2015 was the site of newer dorms Castano, Kimball, Lantana, and the Humanities House, completed in 2015. Most student residences are just outside the campus core, within ten minutes (on foot or bike) of most classrooms and libraries. Some are reserved for freshmen, sophomores, or upper-class students and some are open to all four classes. Most residences are co-ed; seven are all-male fraternities, three are all-female sororities, and there is also one all-female non-sorority house, Roth House. In most residences, men and women live on the same floor, but a few dorms are configured for men and women to live on separate floors (single-gender floors). Several residences are considered theme houses. The Academic, Language, and Culture Houses include EAST (Education and Society Themed House), Hammarskjöld (International Themed House), Haus Mitteleuropa (Central European Themed House), La Casa Italiana (Italian Language and Culture), La Maison Française (French Language and Culture House), Slavianskii Dom (Slavic/East European Themed House), Storey (Human Biology Themed House), and Yost (Spanish Language and Culture). Cross-Cultural Themed Houses include Casa Zapata (Chicano/Latino Theme in Stern Hall), Muwekma-tah-ruk (American Indian/Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian Themed House), Okada (Asian-American Themed House in Wilbur Hall), and Ujamaa (Black/African-American Themed House in Lagunita Court). Focus Houses include Freshman-Sophomore College (Academic Focus),
Branner Hall Since the founding, Stanford University has provided on-campus housing for students. Today, all undergraduate students, most graduate students, and many graduate employees use campus housing. While not all graduate students are eligible for campus ...
(Community Service), Kimball (Arts & Performing Arts), Crothers (Global Citizenship), and Toyon (Sophomore Priority). Theme houses predating the current "theme" classification system are Columbae (Social Change Through Nonviolence, since 1970), and Synergy (Exploring Alternatives, since 1972). Co-ops or "Self-Ops" are another housing option. These houses feature cooperative living, where residents and eating associates each contribute work to keep the house running, such as cooking meals or cleaning shared spaces. These houses have unique themes around which their community is centered. Many co-ops are hubs of music, art and philosophy. The co-ops on campus are 576 Alvarado Row (formerly Chi Theta Chi), Columbae, Enchanted Broccoli Forest (EBF), Hammarskjöld, Kairos, Terra (the unofficial LGBT house), and Synergy. Phi Sigma, at 1018 Campus Drive was formerly Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity, but in 1973 became a Self-Op. As of 2015 around 55 percent of the graduate student population lived on campus. First-year graduate students are guaranteed on-campus housing. Stanford also subsidizes off-campus apartments in nearby Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Mountain View for graduate students who are guaranteed on-campus housing but are unable to live on campus due to a lack of space.


Athletics

As of 2016 Stanford had 16 male varsity sports and 20 female varsity sports, 19 club sports and about 27 intramural sports In 1930, following a unanimous vote by the executive committee for the Associated Students, the athletic department adopted the mascot "Indian." The Indian symbol and name were dropped by President Richard Lyman in 1972, after objections from Native American students and a vote by the student senate. The sports teams are now officially referred to as the "Stanford Cardinal," referring to the deep red color, not the cardinal bird. Stanford is a member of the
Pac-12 Conference The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its College football, football teams compete in the NCAA D ...
in most sports, the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation in several other sports, and the America East Conference in field hockey with the participation in the inter-collegiate NCAA's Division I FBS. Its traditional sports rival is the University of California, Berkeley, the neighbor to the north in the East Bay. The winner of the annual " Big Game" between the
Cal Cal or CAL may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Cal'' (novel), a 1983 novel by Bernard MacLaverty * "Cal" (short story), a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov * ''Cal'' (1984 film), an Irish drama starring John Lynch and Helen Mir ...
and
Cardinal Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to: Animals * Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **''Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae **''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, the ...
football teams gains custody of the Stanford Axe. As of May 9, 2022, Stanford has won 130 NCAA team championships, more than any other school. Stanford has won at least one NCAA team championship each academic year for 46 consecutive years, starting in 1976–77 and continuing through 2021–22. The second-longest NCAA championship streak was 19 years, achieved by USC from 1959 to 1960 through 1977–78. As of January 1, 2022, Stanford athletes have won 529 NCAA individual championships. No other Division I school is within 100 of Stanford's total. Stanford won 25 consecutive NACDA Directors' Cups, from 1994 to 1995 through 2018–19, awarded annually to the most successful overall college sports program in the nation. 177 Stanford-affiliated athletes have won a total of 296 Summer Olympic medals (150 gold, 79 silver, 67 bronze), including 26 medals at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and 27 medals at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. In the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, Stanford-affiliated athletes won 26 medals, more than any other university. Stanford athletes have won medals in every Summer Olympic Games since 1912.


Traditions

* "Hail, Stanford, Hail!" is the Stanford hymn sometimes sung at ceremonies or adapted by the various university singing groups. It was written in 1892 by mechanical engineering professor Albert W. Smith and his wife, Mary Roberts Smith (in 1896 she earned the first Stanford doctorate in economics and later became associate professor of sociology), but was not officially adopted until after a performance on campus in March 1902 by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. * Big Game: The central football rivalry between Stanford and UC Berkeley. First played in 1892, and for a time played by the universities' rugby teams, it is one of the oldest college rivalries in the United States. * The Stanford Axe: A trophy earned by the winner of Big Game, exchanged only as necessary. The axe originated in 1899 when Stanford yell leader Billy Erb wielded a lumberman's axe to inspire the team. Stanford lost, and the Axe was stolen by Berkeley students following the game. In 1930, Stanford students staged an elaborate heist to recover the Axe. In 1933, the schools agreed to exchange it as a prize for winning Big Game. As of 2021, a restaurant centrally located on Stanford's campus is named "The Axe and Palm" in reference to the Axe. * Big Game Gaieties: In the week ahead of Big Game, a 90-minute original musical (written, composed, produced, and performed by the students of Ram's Head Theatrical Society) is performed in Memorial Auditorium. *
Full Moon on the Quad Full Moon on the Quad, also referred to as FMOTQ, is an annual tradition at Stanford University. During the event, students gather at Main Quad and kiss one another starting at midnight. Typically organized by the Junior class cabinet, the festiv ...
: An annual event at Main Quad, where students gather to kiss one another starting at midnight. Typically organized by the junior class cabinet, the festivities include live entertainment, such as music and dance performances. * The
Stanford Marriage Pact The Marriage Pact is an annual matchmaking activity that takes place on American college campuses, by which students fill out compatibility surveys in order to find a partner among fellow participants, who they agree will be their backup "safety" s ...
: An annual matchmaking event where thousands of students complete a questionnaire about their values and are subsequently matched with the best person for them to make a "marriage pact" with. * Fountain Hopping: At any time of year, students tour Stanford's main campus fountains to dip their feet or swim in some of the university's 25 fountains. * Mausoleum Party: An annual
Halloween Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve) is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints' Day. It begins the observanc ...
party at the
Stanford Mausoleum The Stanford Mausoleum, located in the Northwest of the Stanford University campus in the Stanford University Arboretum, holds the remains of the university's namesake Leland Stanford, Jr. and his parents Leland and Jane Stanford. Once per yea ...
, the final resting place of
Leland Stanford Jr. Leland Stanford Jr. (May 14, 1868 – March 13, 1884), known as Leland DeWitt Stanford until he was nine, was the only son of American industrialist and politician Leland Stanford and his wife Jane. Following his death from typhoid at age 15, h ...
and his parents. A 20-year tradition, the Mausoleum party was on hiatus from 2002 to 2005 due to a lack of funding, but was revived in 2006. In 2008, it was hosted in Old Union rather than at the actual Mausoleum, because rain prohibited generators from being rented. In 2009, after fundraising efforts by the Junior Class Presidents and the ASSU Executive, the event was able to return to the Mausoleum despite facing budget cuts earlier in the year. * Wacky Walk: At commencement, graduates forgo a more traditional entrance and instead stride into Stanford Stadium in a large procession wearing wacky costumes. * Steam Tunneling: Stanford has a network of underground brick-lined tunnels that conduct central heating to more than 200 buildings via steam pipes. Students sometimes navigate the corridors, rooms, and locked gates, carrying flashlights and water bottles. ''Stanford Magazine'' named steam tunneling one of the "101 things you must do" before graduating from the Farm in 2000. * Band Run: An annual festivity at the beginning of the school year, where the band picks up freshmen from dorms across campus while stopping to perform at each location, culminating in a finale performance at Main Quad. *Viennese Ball: a formal
ball A ball is a round object (usually spherical, but can sometimes be ovoid) with several uses. It is used in ball games, where the play of the game follows the state of the ball as it is hit, kicked or thrown by players. Balls can also be used f ...
with
waltzes The waltz ( ), meaning "to roll or revolve") is a ballroom and folk dance, normally in triple ( time), performed primarily in closed position. History There are many references to a sliding or gliding dance that would evolve into the wal ...
that was initially started in the 1970s by students returning from the now-closed (since 1987) Stanford in Vienna overseas program. It is now open to all students. * The long-unofficial motto of Stanford, selected by President Jordan, is "''Die Luft der Freiheit weht.''" Translated from the German language, this quotation from Ulrich von Hutten means, "The wind of freedom blows." The motto was controversial during World War I, when anything in German was suspect; at that time the university disavowed that this motto was official. It was made official by way of incorporation into an official seal by the board of trustees in December 2002. * Degree of Uncommon Man/Uncommon Woman: Stanford does not award honorary degrees, but in 1953 the "degree of Uncommon Man/Uncommon Woman" was created by Stanford Associates, part of the Stanford alumni organization, to recognize alumni who give rare and extraordinary service to the university. It is awarded not at prescribed intervals, but instead only when the president of the university deems it appropriate to recognize extraordinary service. Recipients include Herbert Hoover, Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard, Lucile Packard, and John Gardner. * Former campus traditions include the Big Game bonfire on Lake Lagunita (a seasonal lake usually dry in the fall), which was formally ended in 1997 because of the presence of endangered salamanders in the lake bed.


Religious life

Students and staff at Stanford are of many different religions. The Stanford Office for Religious Life's mission is "to guide, nurture and enhance spiritual, religious and ethical life within the Stanford University community" by promoting enriching dialogue, meaningful ritual, and enduring friendships among people of all religious backgrounds. It is headed by a dean with the assistance of a senior associate dean and an associate dean. Stanford Memorial Church, in the center of campus, has a Sunday University Public Worship service (UPW) usually in the "Protestant Ecumenical Christian" tradition where the Memorial Church Choir sings and a sermon is preached usually by one of the Stanford deans for Religious Life. UPW sometimes has multifaith services. In addition, the church is used by the Catholic community and by some of the other Christian denominations at Stanford. Weddings happen most Saturdays and the university has for over 20 years allowed blessings of same-gender relationships and now legal weddings. In addition to the church, the Office for Religious Life has a Center for Inter-Religious Community, Learning, and Experiences (CIRCLE) on the third floor of Old Union. It offers a common room, an interfaith sanctuary, a seminar room, a student lounge area, and a reading room, as well as offices housing a number of Stanford Associated Religions (SAR) member groups and the Senior Associate Dean and Associate Dean for Religious Life. Most though not all religious student groups belong to SAR. The SAR directory includes organizations that serve atheist, Bahá’í, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islam, Jewish, and Sikh groups, though these groups vary year by year. The Windhover Contemplation Center was dedicated in October 2014, and was intended to provide spiritual sanctuary for students and staff in the midst of their course and work schedules; the center displays the "Windhover" paintings by Nathan Oliveira, the late Stanford professor and artist. Some religions have a larger and more formal presence on campus in addition to the student groups; these include the Catholic Community at Stanford and Hillel at Stanford.


Greek life

Fraternities and sororities have been active on the Stanford campus since 1891 when the university first opened. In 1944, University President Donald Tresidder banned all Stanford sororities due to extreme competition. However, following Title IX, the Board of Trustees lifted the 33-year ban on sororities in 1977. Students are not permitted to join a fraternity or sorority until spring quarter of their freshman year. As of 2016 Stanford had 31 Greek organizations, including 14 sororities and 16 fraternities. Nine of the Greek organizations were housed (eight in University-owned houses and one, Sigma Chi, in their own house, although the land is owned by the university). Six chapters were members of the African American Fraternal and Sororal Association, 11 chapters were members of the Interfraternity Council, seven chapters belonged to the Intersorority Council, and six chapters belonged to the Multicultural Greek Council. * Stanford is home to three unhoused historically National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC or "Divine Nine") sororities (
Alpha Kappa Alpha Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. () is the first intercollegiate historically African American sorority. The sorority was founded on January 15, 1908, at the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C., by a group of sixteen stud ...
,
Delta Sigma Theta Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. () is a historically African American sorority. The organization was founded by college-educated women dedicated to public service with an emphasis on programs that assist the African American community. Delta ...
, and
Sigma Gamma Rho Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. () is a historically African American sorority, international collegiate, and non-profit community service organization that was founded on November 12, 1922, by seven educators on the Irvington campus (1875–1 ...
) and three unhoused NPHC fraternities (
Alpha Phi Alpha Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. () is the oldest intercollegiate historically African American fraternity. It was initially a literary and social studies club organized in the 1905–1906 school year at Cornell University but later evolved int ...
, Kappa Alpha Psi, and
Phi Beta Sigma Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. () is a historically African American fraternity. It was founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C. on January 9, 1914, by three young African-American male students with nine other Howard students as char ...
). These fraternities and sororities operate under the African American Fraternal Sororal Association (AAFSA) at Stanford. * Seven historically
National Panhellenic Conference The National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) is an umbrella organization for 26 (inter)national women's Fraternities and sororities, sororities throughout the United States and Canada. Each member group is autonomous as a social, Greek alphabet#Use ...
(NPC) sororities, four of which are unhoused ( Alpha Phi, Alpha Epsilon Phi, Chi Omega, and
Kappa Kappa Gamma Kappa Kappa Gamma (), also known simply as Kappa or KKG, is a collegiate sorority founded at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, United States. It has a membership of more than 260,000 women, with 140 collegiate chapters in the United States a ...
) and three of which are housed ( Delta Delta Delta, Kappa Alpha Theta, and Pi Beta Phi) call Stanford home. These sororities operate under the Stanford Inter-sorority Council (ISC). * Eleven historically National Interfraternity Conference (NIC) fraternities are also represented at Stanford, including five unhoused fraternities ( Alpha Epsilon Pi, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Delta Tau Delta, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and Kappa Alpha Order), and four housed fraternities ( Sigma Phi Epsilon, Kappa Sigma, Phi Kappa Psi, and
Sigma Nu Sigma Nu () is an undergraduate Fraternities and sororities in North America, college fraternity founded at the Virginia Military Institute on January 1, 1869. The fraternity was founded by James Frank Hopkins, Greenfield Quarles and James McIlva ...
). These fraternities operate under the Stanford Inter-fraternity Council (IFC). * There are also four unhoused Multicultural Greek Council (MGC) sororities on campus ( alpha Kappa Delta Phi, Lambda Theta Nu, Sigma Psi Zeta, and
Sigma Theta Psi Sigma Theta Psi () is a multicultural, academic, and social sorority. The sorority was founded at San Jose State University (SJSU) in 1991. Sigma Theta Psi is known for their significant contribution to breast cancer awareness throughout sisters' l ...
), as well as two unhoused MGC fraternities ( Gamma Zeta Alpha and Lambda Phi Epsilon). Lambda Phi Epsilon is recognized by the National Interfraternity Conference (NIC).


Student groups

As of 2020, Stanford had more than 600 student organizations. Groups are often, though not always, partially funded by the university via allocations directed by the student government organization, the ASSU. These funds include "special fees," which are decided by a Spring Quarter vote by the student body. Groups span athletics and recreation, careers/pre-professional, community service, ethnic/cultural, fraternities and sororities, health and counseling, media and publications, the arts, political and social awareness, and religious and philosophical organizations. In contrast to many other selective universities, Stanford policy mandates that all recognized student clubs be "broadly open" for all interested students to join. Stanford is home to a set of student journalism publications. '' The Stanford Daily'' is a student-run daily newspaper and has been published since the university was founded in 1892. The student-run radio station, KZSU Stanford 90.1 FM, features freeform music programming, sports commentary, and news segments; it started in 1947 as an AM radio station. The Stanford Review is a conservative student newspaper founded in 1987. '' The Fountain Hopper'' (''FoHo'') is a financially independent, anonymous student-run campus rag publication, notable for having broken the Brock Turner story. Stanford hosts numerous environmental and sustainability-oriented student groups, including Students for a Sustainable Stanford, Students for Environmental and Racial Justice, and Stanford Energy Club. Stanford is also home to a large number of pre-professional student organizations, organized around missions from startup incubation to paid consulting. The Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) is one of the largest professional organizations in Silicon Valley, with over 5,000 members. Its goal is to support the next generation of entrepreneurs. StartX is a non-profit startup accelerator for student and faculty-led startups. It is staffed primarily by students. Stanford Women In Business (SWIB) is an on-campus business organization, aimed at helping Stanford women find paths to success in the generally male-dominated technology industry. Stanford Marketing is a student group that provides students hands-on training through research and strategy consulting projects with
Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...
clients, as well as workshops led by people from industry and professors in the
Stanford Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business (also known as Stanford GSB) is the graduate business school of Stanford University, a private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective business schoo ...
. Stanford Finance provides mentoring and internships for students who want to enter a career in finance. Stanford Pre Business Association is intended to build connections among industry, alumni, and student communities. Other groups include: * The Stanford Axe Committee is the official guardian of the Stanford Axe and the rest of the time assists the
Stanford Band The Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band (LSJUMB) is the student marching band representing Stanford University and its athletic teams. Billing itself as "The World's Largest Rock and Roll Band," the Stanford Band performs at sporting ...
as a supplementary spirit group. It has existed since 1982. * The Stanford solar car project, in which students build a solar-powered car every 2 years and race it in either the North American Solar Challenge or the World Solar Challenge. * Stanford American Indian Organization (SAIO) which hosts the annual Stanford Powwow started in 1971. This is the largest student-run event on campus and the largest student-run powwow in the country. * The Stanford Improvisors (SImps for short) teach and perform improvisational theatre on campus and in the surrounding community. In 2014 the group finished second in the Golden Gate Regional College Improv tournament and they have since been invited twice to perform at the annual San Francisco Improv Festival. * Asha for Education is a national student group founded in 1991. It focuses mainly on education in India and supporting nonprofit organizations that work mainly in the education sector. Asha's Stanford chapter organizes events like Holi as well as lectures by prominent leaders from India on the university campus.


Safety

Stanford's Department of Public Safety is responsible for law enforcement and safety on the main campus. Its deputy sheriffs are peace officers by arrangement with the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office. The department is also responsible for publishing an annual crime report covering the previous three years as required by the Clery Act. Fire protection has been provided by contract with the Palo Alto Fire Department since 1976. Murder is rare on the campus, although a few cases have been notorious, including the 1974 murder of Arlis Perry in Stanford Memorial Church, which was not solved until 2018. Also notorius was Theodore Streleski's murder of his faculty advisor in 1978.


Campus sexual misconduct

In 2014, Stanford was the tenth highest in the nation in "total of reports of rape" on their main campus, with 26 reports of rape. In Stanford's 2015 Campus Climate Survey, 4.7 percent of female undergraduates reported experiencing sexual assault as defined by the university, and 32.9 percent reported experiencing sexual misconduct. According to the survey, 85% of perpetrators of misconduct were Stanford students and 80% were men. Perpetrators of sexual misconduct were frequently aided by alcohol or drugs, according to the survey: "Nearly three-fourths of the students whose responses were categorized as sexual assault indicated that the act was accomplished by a person or persons taking advantage of them when they were drunk or high, according to the survey. Close to 70 percent of students who reported an experience of sexual misconduct involving nonconsensual penetration and/or oral sex indicated the same." Associated Students of Stanford and student and alumni activists with the anti-rape group Stand with Leah criticized the survey methodology for downgrading incidents involving alcohol if students did not check two separate boxes indicating they were both intoxicated and incapacity while sexually assaulted. Reporting on the Brock Turner rape case, a reporter from ''The Washington Post'' analyzed campus rape reports submitted by universities to the U.S. Department of Education, and found that Stanford was one of the top ten universities in campus rapes in 2014, with 26 reported that year, but when analyzed by rapes per 1000 students, Stanford was not among the top ten.


''People v. Turner''

On the night of January 17–18, 2015, 22-year-old Chanel Miller, who was visiting the campus to attend a party at the Kappa Alpha Order, Kappa Alpha fraternity, was sexually assaulted by Brock Turner, a nineteen-year-old freshman student-athlete from Ohio. Two Stanford graduate students witnessed the attack and intervened; when Turner attempted to flee the two held him down on the ground until police arrived.Liam Stack for ''The New York Times''. June 6, 201
Light Sentence for Brock Turner in Stanford Rape Case Draws Outrage
/ref> Stanford immediately referred the case to prosecutors and offered Miller counseling, and within two weeks had barred Turner from campus after conducting an investigation. Turner was convicted on three felony charges in March 2016 and in June 2016 he received a jail sentence of six months and was declared a sex offender, requiring him to register as such for the rest of his life; prosecutors had sought a six-year prison sentence out of the maximum 14 years that was possible. The case and the relatively lenient sentence drew nationwide attention. Two years later the judge in the case, Stanford graduate Aaron Persky, was recalled by the voters.


Joe Lonsdale

In February 2015, Elise Clougherty filed a sexual assault and harassment lawsuit against venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale.Katie Benner for Bloomberg News. February 2, 201
Benner on Tech: Parsing a Sexual Assault Suit
/ref>Emily Bazelon for ''The New York Times''. February 11, 201

/ref> Lonsdale and Clougherty entered into a relationship in the spring of 2012 when she was a junior and he was her mentor in a Stanford entrepreneurship course. By the spring of 2013 Clougherty had broken off the relationship and filed charges at Stanford that Lonsdale had broken the Stanford policy against consensual relationships between students and faculty and that he had sexually assaulted and harassed her, which resulted in Lonsdale being banned from Stanford for 10 years. Lonsdale challenged Stanford's finding that he had sexually assaulted and harassed her and Stanford rescinded that finding and the campus ban in the fall of 2015. Clougherty withdrew her suit that fall as well.


Notable people

As of late 2021, Stanford had 2,288 tenure-line faculty, senior fellows, center fellows, and medical center faculty.


Award laureates and scholars

Stanford's current community of scholars includes: * 20 Nobel Prize laureates (as of October 2020, 85 affiliates in total); * 174 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences; * 113 members of National Academy of Engineering; * 90 members of National Academy of Medicine; * 303 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; * 10 recipients of the National Medal of Science; * 3 recipients of the National Medal of Technology; * 6 recipients of the National Humanities Medal; * 47 members of American Philosophical Society; * 56 fellows of the American Physics Society (since 1995); * 4 Pulitzer Prize winners; * 33 MacArthur Fellows; * 6 Wolf Foundation Prize winners; * 2 Association for Computational Linguistics, ACL Lifetime Achievement Award winners; * 14 AAAI fellows; * 2 Presidential Medal of Freedom winners. Stanford's faculty and former faculty includes 48 Nobel laureates, 5 Fields Medalists, as well as 17 winners of the Turing Award, the so-called "Nobel Prize in computer science," comprising one-third of the List of Stanford University people#Computer science, awards given in its 44-year history. The university has 27 ACM fellows. It is also affiliated with 4 Gödel Prize winners, 4 Knuth Prize recipients, 10 IJCAI Computers and Thought Award winners, and about 15 Grace Murray Hopper Award winners for their work in the foundations of computer science. Stanford alumni have started many companies and, according to ''Forbes'', has produced the second highest number of billionaires of all universities. As of 2020, 15 Stanford alumni have won the Nobel Prize. As of 2022, 128 Stanford students or alumni have been named
Rhodes Scholars The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...
.


See also

* List of universities by number of billionaire alumni * List of colleges and universities in California * S*, a collaboration between seven universities and the Karolinska Institute for training in bioinformatics and genomics * Stanford School


Explanatory notes


References


Further reading

* Lee Altenberg
''Beyond Capitalism: Leland Stanford's Forgotten Vision''
(Stanford Historical Society, 1990) * Ronald N. Bracewell, ''Trees of Stanford and Environs'' (Stanford Historical Society, 2005) * Ken Fenyo, ''The Stanford Daily 100 Years of Headlines'' (2003), * Jean Fetter, ''Questions and Admissions: Reflections on 100,000 Admissions Decisions at Stanford'' (1997), * Ricard Joncas, David Neumann, and Paul V. Turner. ''The Campus Guide: Stanford University''. Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. . (print); (online). * Stuart W. Leslie, ''The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford'', Columbia University Press, 1994 * Rebecca S. Lowen, R. S. Lowen, ''Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford'', University of California Press, 1997


External links

*
Stanford Athletics website
* {{Authority control Stanford University, 1891 establishments in California Educational institutions established in 1891 Private universities and colleges in California Romanesque Revival architecture in California Schools accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Universities and colleges in Santa Clara County, California