Stanford University

"Stanford" redirects here. For other uses, seeStanford (disambiguation).

Stanford University

Leland Stanford Junior University
Motto	Die Luft der Freiheit weht(German)
Motto in English	"The wind of freedom blows"
Type	Privateresearch university
Established	October 1, 1891(October 1, 1891)
Founder	LelandandJane Stanford
Accreditation	WSCUC
Academic affiliations	AAU COFHE URA Space-grant
Endowment	$36.5 billion (2023)
Budget	$8.9 billion (2023/24)
President	Richard Saller(interim) Jonathan Levin(designate)
Provost	Jenny Martinez
Academic staff	2,323 (Fall 2023)
Administrative staff	18,369 (Fall 2023)
Students	17,529 (Fall 2023)
Undergraduates	7,841 (Fall 2023)
Postgraduates	9,688 (Fall 2023)
Location	Stanford , California , United States 37°25′39″N122°10′12″W
Campus	Large suburb:8,180-acre (3,310-hectare)
Other campuses	Pacific Grove Redwood City Washington, D.C.
Newspaper	The Stanford Daily
Colors	Cardinal Red White
Nickname	Cardinal
Sporting affiliations	NCAA Division I FBS–Pac-12 IRA PCCSC MPSF
Mascot	Stanford Tree(unofficial)
Website	stanford.edu

Stanford University(officiallyLeland Stanford Junior University)is aprivateresearch universityinStanford, California.It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnateLeland Stanford,the eighthgovernorof and then-incumbentsenator from California,and his wife,Jane,in memory of their only child,Leland Jr.The university admitted its first students in 1891,opening as acoeducationalandnon-denominationalinstitution. It struggled financially after Leland's death in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the1906 San Francisco earthquake.FollowingWorld War II,universityprovostFrederick Termaninspired anentrepreneurial culturein order to build a self-sufficient local industry (Silicon Valley).

Stanford is one of the most successful universities worldwide in attractingfundingforstart-up companiesand in also licensing its inventions to existing businesses.Alumni have foundednumerous corporations,which when combined equal the tenth-largest economy in the world.In 1951, theStanford Research Parkwas established inPalo Altoand is the world's first university research park.By 2021, the university had 2,288 tenure-line faculty, senior fellows, center fellows, and medical faculty on staff.

The university is organized around seven schools of study on an 8,180-acre (3,310-hectare) campus, one of the largest in the nation.It houses theHoover Institution,a public policythink tank,and isclassifiedamong "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of two private institutions in thePac-12 Conference.Stanford has won 131NCAAteam championships,and was awarded theNACDA Directors' Cupfor 25 consecutive years, beginning in 1994.Stanford students and alumni have also won over302 Olympic medals (including 153 gold).

Stanford is also thealma materof several world leaders, includingPresident of the United States,Herbert Hoover,Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,Rishi Sunak,Prime Minister of Greece,Kyriakos Mitsotakis,andPrime Minister of Japan,Yukio Hatoyama.The university is associated with74 living billionaires,58Nobel laureates,33MacArthur Fellows,29Turing Awardwinners,as well as 7Wolf Foundation Prizerecipients and 4Pulitzer Prizewinners.Additionally, it is a producer ofFulbright Scholars,Marshall Scholars,Gates Cambridge Scholars,Rhodes Scholars,and members of theUnited States Congress.

History

Statue of the Stanford family on the Stanford University campus

Main article:History of Stanford University

Stanford University was founded in 1885 byLelandandJane Stanford,dedicated to the memory ofLeland Stanford Jr.,their only child. The institution opened in 1891 on Stanford's previous Palo Alto farm. The Stanfords modeled their university after the great Eastern universities, specificallyCornell UniversityinIthaca, 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, including its first president,David Starr Jordan,and second president,John Casper Branner.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.

Center of the campus in 1891

From an architectural point of view, the Stanfords wanted their university to look different and 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."The Stanfords also hired renowned landscape architectFrederick Law Olmsted,who previously designed the Cornell campus, to design the Stanford campus.

Ichthyologist and founding president of Stanford,David Starr Jordan

WhenLeland Stanforddied in 1893, the continued existence of the university was in jeopardy due to a federal lawsuit against his estate, butJane Stanfordinsisted the university remain in operation throughout the financial crisis.The university suffered major damage from the1906 San Francisco earthquake;most of the damage was repaired, but a new library and gymnasium were demolished, and some original features ofMemorial Churchand theQuadwere never restored.During the early-20th century, the university added four professional graduate schools.Stanford University School of Medicinewas established in 1908 when the university acquiredCooper Medical Collegein 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 professionallaw schoolstarting in 1908 and received accreditation from theAmerican Bar Associationin 1923.TheStanford University Graduate School of Educationgrew out of the Department of the History and Art of Education, one of the original twenty-one departments at Stanford, and became a professional graduate school in 1917.TheStanford Graduate School of Businesswas founded in 1925 at the urging of then-trusteeHerbert Hoover.In 1919,The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peacewas started byHerbert Hooverto preserve artifacts related toWorld War I.TheSLAC National Accelerator Laboratory,established in 1962, performs research in particle physics.

In the 1940s and 1950s,Frederick Terman,an engineering professor who later became provost, encouraged Stanford engineering graduates to start their own companies and invent products.During the 1950s, he establishedStanford Industrial Park,a high-tech commercial campus on university land.Also in the 1950s,William Shockley,co-inventor of the silicon transistor, recipient of the 1956Nobel 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 employeesresigned and formed a competing company,Fairchild Semiconductor.The presence of so many high-tech and semiconductor firms helped to establish Stanford and the mid-Peninsulaas a hotbed of innovation, eventually namedSilicon Valleyafter the key ingredient in transistors.Shockley and Terman are both often described as the "fathers of Silicon Valley".

William Shockley,Stanford professor, Nobel laureate in physics, "Father of Silicon Valley"

In the 1950s,Stanford intentionallyreduced and restricted Jewish admissions, and for decades, denied and dismissed claims from students, parents, and alumni that they were doing so.Stanford issued its first institutional apology to the Jewish community in 2022 after an internal task force confirmed that the university deliberately discriminated against Jewish applicants, while also misleading those who expressed concerns, including students, parents, alumni, and theADL.Stanford was once considered a school for "the wealthy",but controversies in later decades damaged its reputation. The 1971Stanford prison experimentwas criticized as unethical,and the misuse of government funds from 1981 resulted in severe penalties for the school's research funding,and the resignation of PresidentDonald Kennedyin 1992.

In the 1960s, Stanford 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 [was] understood at the time as related directly to the university's defense contracts..."Wallace Sterlingwas the President from 1949 to 1968 and he oversaw the growth of Stanford from a financially troubled regional university to a financially sound, internationally recognized academic powerhouse, "the Harvard of the West".Achievements during Sterling's tenure included:

• Moving theStanford Medical Schoolfrom a small, inadequate campus in San Francisco to a new facility on the Stanford campus which was fully integrated into the university to an unusual degree for medical schools.
• Establishing the Stanford Industrial Park (now theStanford Research Park) and the Stanford Shopping Center on leased University land, thus stabilizing the university's finances. The Stanford Industrial Park, together with the university's aggressive pursuit of government research grants, helped to spur the development ofSilicon Valley.
• Increasing the number of students receiving financial aid from less than 5% when he took office to more than one-third when he retired.
• Increasing the size of the student body from 8,300 to 11,300 and the size of the tenured faculty from 322 to 974.
• Launching the PACE fundraising program, the largest such program ever undertaken by any university up to that time.
• Launching a building boom on campus that included a new bookstore, post office, student union, dormitories, a faculty club, and many academic buildings.
• Creating the Overseas Campus program for undergraduates in 1958.

Land

The center of the Stanford University campus

Most of Stanford is on an 8,180-acre (12.8 sq mi; 33.1 km²)campus, one of the largest in the United States.It is on theSan Francisco Peninsula,in the northwest part of theSanta Clara Valley(Silicon Valley) approximately 37 miles (60 km) southeast ofSan Franciscoand approximately 20 miles (30 km) northwest ofSan Jose.Stanford received $4.5 billion in 2006 and spent more than $2.1 billion in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. In 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped.

Stanford's main campus includes acensus-designated placewithinunincorporatedSanta Clara County,although some of the university land (such as theStanford Shopping Centerand theStanford Research Park) is within the city limits ofPalo Alto.The campus also includes much land in unincorporatedSan Mateo County(including theSLAC National Accelerator Laboratoryand theJasper Ridge Biological Preserve), as well as in the city limits ofMenlo Park(Stanford Hills neighborhood),Woodside,andPortola Valley.

The central campus includes a seasonal lake (Lake Lagunita,an irrigation reservoir), home to the vulnerableCalifornia tiger salamander.As of 2012,Lake Lagunitawas often dry and the university had no plans to artificially fill it.Heavy rains in January 2023 refilled Lake Lagunita to up to 8 feet of depth.Two other reservoirs,Searsville LakeonSan Francisquito Creekand Felt Lake,are on more remote sections of the founding grant.

Central campus

The central academic campus is adjacent to Palo Alto,bounded byEl Camino Real,Stanford Avenue, Junipero Serra Blvd, andSand Hill Road,offState Route 82.TheUnited States Postal Servicehas assigned it twoZIP Codes:94305 for campus mail and 94309 forP.O. boxmail. It lies withinarea code 650.

View of the main quadrangle of Stanford with Memorial Church in the center background from across the grass-covered Oval

Non-central campus

On the founding grant:

• Jasper Ridge Biological Preserveis a 1,200-acre (490 ha) 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 Laboratoryis a facility west of the central campus operated by the university for the Department of Energy. It contains the longestlinear particle acceleratorin the world, 2 miles (3.2 km) on a 426-acre (172 ha) area of land.

Off the founding grant:

• Hopkins Marine Station,inPacific Grove,California, is amarine biologyresearch center owned by the university since 1892. Based on US Pacific Coast, it is one of the oldest marine laboratories. It includes 10research laboratoriesand is also used for archaeological exploration purposes.A graduate student of the anthropology department discovered evidence that the location was home to a Chinese American fishing village in the early 1900s.
• Study abroad locations: unlike typicalstudy abroadprograms, 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 inRedwood City, California,a few miles north of the main campus. In 2005, the university purchased a small, 35-acre (14 ha) campus in Midpoint Technology Park intended for staff offices; development was delayed by theGreat Recession.In 2015, the university announced a development plan,and the Redwood City campus opened in March 2019.
• The Bass Center inWashington, 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 withPeking University.

Lake Lagunita in winter; the Dish, a large radio telescope and a local landmark, is visible in the Stanford-owned foothills behind the lake and is the high point of a popular campus jogging and walking trail.

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 acondominium,the houses can be bought and sold to other Stanford faculty but the land under the houses is leased for 51 years with the possibility of extensions. Houses in the "Ghetto" appreciate and depreciate, but not as rapidly as overallSilicon Valleyvalues.

Other uses

Some of the land is managed to provide revenue for the university such as theStanford Shopping Centerand theStanford Research Park.Stanford land is also leased for a token rent by thePalo Alto Unified School Districtfor several schools includingPalo Alto High SchoolandGunn High School.El Camino Park, the oldest Palo Alto city park, 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 theMain QuadandMemorial Church,theCantor Center for Visual Artsand theBing Concert Hall,theStanford Mausoleumwith the nearbyAngel of Grief,Hoover Tower,theRodinSculpture Garden, thePapua New Guinea Sculpture Garden,theArizona Cactus Garden,theStanford University Arboretum,Green Libraryandthe Dish.Frank Lloyd Wright's 1937Hanna–Honeycomb Houseand the 1919Lou Henry Hoover Houseare both listed on theNational Register of Historic Places.White Memorial Fountain(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 byAristides Demetriosafter a national competition as a memorial for two brothers in the class of 1949, William White and John White II, one of whom died before graduating and one shortly after in 1952.

• 
  Interior of theStanford Memorial Churchat the center of the Main Quad
• 
  Hoover Tower,at 285 feet (87 m), the tallest building on campus
• 
  The newStanford Stadium,site of home football games
• 
  Stanford Quad with Memorial Church in the background
• 
  The Dish,a 150 feet (46 m) diameter radio telescope on the Stanford foothills overlooking the main campus
• 
  White Memorial Fountain(The Claw)

Administration and organization

Stanford is a private, non-profit university administered as acorporate trustgoverned by a privately appointedboard of trusteeswith 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 theStanford Research Park,theStanford Shopping Center,theCantor Center for Visual Arts,Stanford University Medical Center,and many associated medical facilities (including theLucile 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.Richard Sallerbecame the interim president in September 2023.On April 4, 2024, the board of trustees announced thatJonathan Levinwould become the thirteenth president on August 1, 2024.The provost is the chief academic and budget officer, to whom the deans of each of the seven schools report.Jenny Martinezbecame the fourteenth provost in October 2023.The university is organized into seven academic schools.

The schools ofHumanities and Sciences(twenty-seven departments),Engineering(nine departments),andSustainability(nine departments)have both graduate and undergraduate programs while the Schools ofLaw,Medicine,Education,andBusinesshave graduate programs only. 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 2021.

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 aticketby the entire student body.Stanford is the beneficiary of a special clause in theCalifornia Constitution,which explicitly exempts Stanford property from taxation so long as the property is used for educational purposes.

Endowment, assets, and donations

Main article:Stanford University endowment

Stanford's endowment includes real estate and other investments valued at $36.5 billion as of August 2023,and is one of the fourlargest academic endowmentsin the United States.The endowment consists of $29.9 billion in a merged pool of assets and $6.6 billion of real estate near the main campus. Stanford is the largest landowner in the Silicon ValleyPayouts from the endowment covered approximately 22% of university expenses in the 2023 fiscal year.

Since inception, the university has been the beneficiary of large donations. The endowment began in 1885, six years before the opening of the university, when Leland Stanford and his wife Jane conveyed approximately $20 million to the university.The university's pioneering of technology intellectual property transfer created both direct investments and enabled a unique pipeline of mega-donorsincluding from alumni-founded companies withGoogle(Sergey BrinandLarry Page),Nike(Phil Knight),Hewlett-Packard(David PackardandBill Hewlett),andSun Microsystems(Vinod Kohsla)as examples. Further, the university's global reputationand continued leadership in technologyhas attracted large donations from prominent figures such as the co-founder ofNetscape(Jim Clark),founder ofSAP SE(Hasso Plattner),co-founder ofAndreessen Horowitz(Marc AndreessenandLaura Arillaga-Andreessen),chairman ofKleiner Perkins(John Doerrand his wife Ann).

The originalGolden spikeon display at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University

Academics

Admissions

First-time fall freshman statistics
	2021	2020	2019	2018	2017
Applicants	55,471	45,227	47,498	47,452	44,073
Admits	2,190	2,349	2,062	2,071	2,085
Admit rate	3.9%	5.19%	4.34%	4.36%	4.73%
Enrolled	1,757	1,607	1,701	1,697	1,703
Yield	80.23%	68.41%	82.49%	81.94%	81.68%
SAT range	1420–1570	1420–1550	1440–1550	1420–1570	1390–1540
ACT range	32–35	31–35	32–35	32–35	32–35

Stanford is considered byUS Newsto be 'most selective' with an acceptance rate of 4%, one of the lowest among US universities. Half of the applicants accepted to Stanford have anSATscore between 1440 and 1570 or anACTscore between 32 and 35. Admissions officials consider a student'sgrade point averageto 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'.Of those students accepted to Stanford's Class of 2026, 1,736 chose to attend, of which 21% were first-generation college students.

Stanford's admission process isneed-blindfor 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, 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 receivePell 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.

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 theWestern Association of Schools and Collegeswith the latest review in 2023.

Research centers and institutes

Hoover Tower, inspired by the cathedral tower atSalamancain Spain

Main article:Stanford University centers and institutes

Stanford isclassifiedamong "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity."The university's research expenditure in fiscal years of 2021/22 was $1.82 billion and the total number of sponsored projects was 7,900.By 2016, the Office of the Vice Provost and Dean of Research oversaweighteen independent laboratories, centers, and institutes.Kathryn Ann Moleris 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 theSLAC National Accelerator Laboratory(originally the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), theStanford Research Institute(an independent institution which originated at the university), theHoover Institution(a conservativethink tank),and theHasso Plattner Institute of Design(a multidisciplinary design school in cooperation with theHasso Plattner InstituteofUniversity of Potsdamthat integrates product design, engineering, and business management education).

Stanford is home to theMartin Luther King Jr.Research and Education Institute, which grew out of and still contains the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project, a collaboration with theKing Centerto publish the King papers held by the King Center.It also runs theJohn S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalistsand the Center for Ocean Solutions, which brings together marine science and policy to address challenges facing the ocean. It focuses on five points: climate change, overfishing, coastal development, pollution, and plastics.Together withUC BerkeleyandUC San Francisco,Stanford is part of theBiohub,a new medical science research center founded in 2016 by a $600 million commitment from Facebook CEO and founderMark Zuckerbergand pediatricianPriscilla Chan.This medical research center is working for designing advanced-level health care units.

Libraries and digital resources

Green Library

Main article:Stanford University Libraries

By 2014,Stanford University Libraries(SUL) had twenty-four libraries in total. TheHoover Institution Library and Archivesis a research center based on history of 20th-century.Stanford University Libraries(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, and thousands of other digital resources.The main library in the SU library system is theGreen Library,which also contains various meeting and conference rooms, study spaces, and reading rooms.Lathrop Library(previouslyMeyer Library,demolished in 2015), holds various student-accessible media resources and houses one of the largestEast Asiacollections with 540,000 volumes.Stanford University Press,founded in 1892, published about 130 books per year has printed more than 3,000 books.It also has fifteen subject areas.

Arts

Bronze statues byAuguste Rodinare scattered throughout the campus, including theseBurghers of Calais.

Stanford is home to theCantor Center for Visual Arts,a museum with twenty-four 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 byRodinis among the largest in the world.TheThomas Welton StanfordGallery, 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 andHarry 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 wood carvings and "totem poles."

The Stanford music department sponsors many ensembles, including five choirs, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra,Stanford Taiko,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 ofGilbert and Sullivan.Stanford is also host totena cappellagroups,including theMendicants(Stanford's first),Counterpoint(the first all-female group on theWest Coast),the Harmonics,theStanford Fleet Street Singers,Talisman,Everyday People,and Raagapella.

Reputation and rankings

Academic rankings
National
ARWU	2
Forbes	3
U.S. News & World Report	3(tie)
Washington Monthly	2
WSJ/College Pulse	4
Global
ARWU	2
QS	6
THE	2
U.S. News & World Report	3

Stanford is widely considered one of the most prestigious universities in the world by leading sources includingU.S. News & World Report,Times Higher Education,andQS World University Rankings.As noted inThe Wall Street Journal's 2024 rankings, "the usual players are almost always going to come out on top: The Princetons, the Stanfords, the Yales, the Harvards. They will jockey for those first few spots on whatever ranking you happen to be looking."

Standings in rankings

In 2022,Washington Monthlyranked Stanford at 1st position in their annual list of top universities in the United States.In 2019, Stanford University took 1st place on Reuters' list of theWorld's Most Innovative Universitiesfor the fifth consecutive year.Stanford Graduate School of Businesshas consistently been both the most selective business school in the worldand consistently ranked 1st in the list of bestbusiness schoolsyear-over-year consecutively by various reputed studies includingBloomberg BusinessweekandU.S. News & World Reportfor 2024.Stanford Law Schoolis also consistently been amongst the two most selective law schools in the worldand consistently ranked 1st in the list of best law schools year-over-year consecutively for 2024 inU.S. News & World Report.

In a 2022 survey byThe 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.From polls of college applicants done byThe 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."TheAcademic Ranking of World Universities(ARWU)ranked Stanford second in the world (after Harvard) most years from 2003 to 2020.Times Higher Educationrecognizes Stanford as one of the world's "six super brands" on itsWorld Reputation Rankings,along withBerkeley,Cambridge,Harvard,MIT,andOxford.

Discoveries and innovation

Natural sciences

Felix Bloch,physics professor, 1952 Nobel laureate for his work at Stanford

• Biological synthesisofdeoxyribonucleic acid(DNA) –Arthur Kornbergdiscovered the mechanisms in the biological synthesis ofribonucleic acidanddeoxyribonucleic acid,and won theNobel Prize in Physiology or Medicinein 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.
• FirstTransgenic organism–Stanley CohenandHerbert Boyerwere 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, includinghuman growth hormoneandhepatitis B vaccine.
• Laser–Arthur Leonard Schawlowshared the 1981Nobel Prize in PhysicswithNicolaas BloembergenandKai Siegbahnfor his work on lasers.
• Nuclear magnetic resonance–Felix Blochdeveloped new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements, which are the underlying principles ofMRI.

Computer and applied sciences

Vint Cerf,co-leader of the Stanford team that designed the architecture of the internet

• ARPANET–Stanford 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 Cerfled 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–John Chowningof the Music department invented the FM music synthesis algorithm in 1967, and Stanford later licensed it toYamaha Corporation.
• Google– Google began in January 1996 as a research project byLarry PageandSergey Brin,when they were both PhD students at Stanford.They were working on theStanford Digital Library Project(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 theNational Science Foundation,among other federal agencies.Today, Google stands as one of the most valuable brands in the world.
• Klystron tube– invented by the brothersRussell and Sigurd Varianat 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 onradarequipment.
• RISC–ARPAfundedVLSI projectofmicroprocessordesign. Stanford andUC Berkeleyare most associated with the popularization of this concept. TheStanford MIPSwould go on to be commercialized as the successfulMIPS architecture,whileBerkeley RISCgave its name to the entire concept, commercialized as theSPARC.Another success from this era wereIBM's efforts that eventually led to theIBM POWER instruction set architecture,PowerPC,andPower ISA.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 theUnix workstationmarket as well asembedded processorsinlaser printers,routersand similar products.
• SUN workstation–Andy Bechtolsheimdesigned the SUN workstation,for theStanford University Networkcommunications project as a personalCADworkstation,which led toSun Microsystems.

Businesses and entrepreneurship

Main article:List of companies founded by Stanford University alumni

Stanford is one of the most successful universities worldwide in creating companies and licensing its inventions to existing companies, and it is often considered the model fortechnology transfer.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 oftenfunded,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 notable companies closely associated with Stanford and their connections include:

Co-founders ofHewlett-Packard,Bill Hewlett(BS 1934) andDavid Packard(BA 1934)

• Hewlett-Packard,1939: co-foundersWilliam R. Hewlett(B.S, PhD) andDavid Packard(M.S)
• Silicon Graphics,1981: co-foundersJames H. Clark(Associate Professor) and several of his graduate students
• Sun Microsystems,1982:co-foundersVinod Khosla(M.B.A),Andy Bechtolsheim(PhD) andScott McNealy(M.B.A)
• Cisco,1984:co-foundersLeonard Bosack(M.S) andSandy 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
• Nvidia,1993:co-founderJensen Huang(M.S)
• Yahoo!,1994:co-foundersJerry Yang(B.S, M.S) andDavid Filo(M.S)
• Netflix,1997:co-founderReed Hastings(M.S)
• Google,1998:co-foundersLarry Page(M.S) andSergey Brin(M.S)
• PayPal,1998:co-foundersKen Howery(B.A),Peter Thiel(B.A, J.D), Elon Musk (Graduate Attendee)
• VMware,1998:co-founders Mendel Rosenblum (Professor) and Edouard Bugnion (M.S)
• LinkedIn,2002:co-foundersReid Hoffman(B.S), Konstantin Guericke (B.S, M.S), Eric Lee (B.S), and Alan Liu (B.S)
• YouTube,2005:co-founder Jawed Karim (M.S)
• Instagram,2010:co-foundersKevin Systrom(B.S) andMike Krieger(B.S)
• Snapchat,2011: co-foundersEvan Spiegel(B.S), Reggie Brown (B.S) andBobby Murphy(B.S)
• Coursera,2012:co-foundersAndrew Ng(Associate Professor) andDaphne Koller(Professor, PhD)
• DoorDash,2013:co-foundersTony Xu(M.B.A) and Evan Moore (M.B.A)

Student life

Student body

Undergraduate demographics as of Fall 2020

Race and ethnicity	Total
White	29%	29
Asian	25%	25
Hispanic	17%	17
Non-residentForeign nationals	11%	11
Other	10%	10
Black	7%	7
Native American	1%	1
Economic diversity
Low-income	18%	18
Affluent	82%	82

Stanford enrolled 6,996 undergraduate and 10,253 graduate students in 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.In 2010, 15% of undergraduates were first-generation students.

Dormitories and student housing

Main article:Stanford University student housing

By 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,andfraternities and sororities.At Manzanita Park, 118mobile homeswere installed as "temporary" housing from 1969 to 1991, but have become 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-malefraternities,three are all-femalesororities,and there is also one all-female non-sorority house, Roth House. In most residences, men and women live on the same floor, but some have single-gender floors.

Several residences are considered "theme" houses; predating the current classification system are Columbae (Social Change Through Nonviolence, since 1970),and Synergy (Exploring Alternatives, since 1972).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 includeFreshman-Sophomore College(Academic Focus),Branner Hall(Community Service), Kimball (Arts & Performing Arts), Crothers (Global Citizenship), andToyon(Sophomore Priority).Co-opsor "Self-Ops" are another housing option.

Many students use bicycles to get around the large campus.

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 unofficialLGBThouse),and Synergy.Phi Sigma, at 1018 Campus Drive was formerlyPhi Sigma Kappafraternity, but in 1973 became a Self-Op.By 2015, 55 percent of the graduate student population lived on campus.Stanford also subsidizes off-campus apartments in nearbyPalo Alto,Menlo Park,andMountain Viewfor graduate students who are guaranteed on-campus housing but are unable to live on campus due to a lack of space.

Athletics

Main article:Stanford Cardinal

TheLeland Stanford Junior University Marching Bandrallies football fans with arrangements of "All Right Now" and other contemporary music

In 2016, Stanford had sixteen male varsity sports and twenty female varsity sports,nineteen 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 PresidentRichard Lymanin 1972, after objections fromNative Americanstudents and a vote by the student senate.The sports teams are now officially referred to as the "Stanford Cardinal," referring to thedeep red color,not the cardinal bird. Stanford is a member of thePac-12 Conferencein most sports, theMountain Pacific Sports Federationin several other sports, and theAmerica East Conferenceinfield hockeywith the participation in the inter-collegiateNCAA'sDivision IFBS.The two official colors of the university areStanford Cardinal RedandPalo Alto Green.

Its traditional sports rival is theUniversity of California, Berkeley.The winner of the annual "Big Game"between theCalandCardinalfootball teams gains custody ofthe Stanford Axe.As of May 23, 2024, Stanford has won 136 NCAA team championships, more than any other school. Stanford has won at least one NCAA team championship each academic year for 48 consecutive years, from 1976–77 through to 2023–24.As of January 1, 2022, Stanford athletes have also won 529 NCAA individual championships. No other Division I school is within 100 of Stanford's total.Stanford have won 25 consecutive NACDA Directors' Cups, from 1994–1995 through to 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.

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 theMormon Tabernacle Choir.
• Big Game:The central football rivalry between Stanford andUC 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.
• TheStanford 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:An annual event atMain 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.
• TheStanford Marriage Pact:An annualmatchmakingevent 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 annualHalloweenparty at theStanford Mausoleum,the final resting place ofLeland Stanford Jr.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 Magazinenamed 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 atMain Quad.
• Viennese Ball: A formalballwithwaltzesthat was initially started in the 1970s by students returning from the now-closed (since 1987) Stanford inViennaoverseas 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 fromUlrich von Huttenmeans, "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 includeHerbert Hoover,Bill Hewlett,Dave Packard,Lucile Packard,andJohn Gardner.
• Former campus traditions include the Big Game bonfire onLake Lagunita(a seasonal lake usually dry in the fall), which was formally ended in 1997 because of the presence of endangeredsalamandersin 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 the other Christian denominations at Stanford. Weddings happen most Saturdays and the university has allowed blessings of same-gender relationships and 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, Muslim, 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 byNathan 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 and Hillel communities at Stanford.

Greek life

Fraternities and sororities have been active on the Stanford campus since 1891 when the university first opened. In 1944, University PresidentDonald Tresidderbanned all Stanford sororities due to extreme competition.However, followingTitle 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.Stanford has thirty-one Greek organizations, including fourteen sororities and sixteen 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).Five chapters were members of the African American Fraternal and Sororal Association, eleven 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 two unhoused historicallyNational Pan-Hellenic Council(NPHC or "Divine Nine" ) sororities (Alpha Kappa Alpha,andDelta Sigma Theta) and two unhoused NPHC fraternities (Alpha Phi AlphaandKappa Alpha Psi). These fraternities and sororities operate under the African American Fraternal Sororal Association (AAFSA) at Stanford.
• Seven historicallyNational Panhellenic Conference(NPC) sororities, four of which are unhoused (Alpha Phi,Alpha Epsilon Phi,Chi Omega,andKappa Kappa Gamma) and three of which are housed (Delta Delta Delta,Kappa Alpha Theta,andPi Beta Phi) call Stanford home. These sororities operate under the Stanford Inter-sorority Council (ISC).
• Eleven historicallyNational 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,andKappa Alpha Order), and four housed fraternities (Sigma Phi Epsilon,Kappa Sigma,Phi Kappa Psi,andSigma Nu). 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,andSigma Theta Psi), as well as two unhoused MGC fraternities (Gamma Zeta AlphaandLambda Phi Epsilon). Lambda Phi Epsilon is recognized by the National Interfraternity Conference (NIC).

Student groups

Students on an urban hike organized by the Graduate Student Programming Board (GSPB)

Stanford has 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.

The Stanford Dailyis a student-run daily newspaper and has been published since the university was founded in 1892.The student-run radio station,KZSUStanford 90.1 FM, features freeform music programming, sports commentary, and news segments; it started in 1947 as an AM radio station.The Stanford Reviewis a conservative student newspaper founded in 1987.The Fountain Hopper(FoHo) is a financially independent, anonymous student-run campusragpublication, notable for having broken theBrock 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 a member of the Ivy Plus Sustainability Consortium, through which it has committed to best-practice sharing and the ongoing exchange of campus sustainability solutions along with other member institutions.

Stanford is also home to a large number of pre-professional student organizations, organized around missions from startup incubation to paid consulting. TheBusiness 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.StartXis a non-profit startup accelerator for student and faculty-ledstartups.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 withFortune 500clients, as well as workshops led by people from industry and professors in theStanford Graduate School of Business.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.

Stanford is also home to several academic groups focused on government and politics, includingStanford in GovernmentandStanford Women in Politics.TheStanford Society for Latin American Politicsis Stanford's first student organization focused on the region's political, economic, and social developments, working to increase the representation and study ofLatin Americaon campus. Former guest speakers includeJosé MujicaandGustavo Petro.Other groups include:

• The Stanford Axe Committee is the official guardian of theStanford Axeand the rest of the time assists theStanford Bandas a supplementary spirit group. It has existed since 1982.
• 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 Educationis 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 likeHolias 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 arepeace officersby arrangement with theSanta Clara County Sheriff's Office.The department is also responsible for publishing an annual crime report covering the previous three years as required by theClery 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 ofArlis Perryin Stanford Memorial Church, which was not solved until 2018.Also infamous wasTheodore 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 fromThe Washington Postanalyzed 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

Main article:People v. Turner

On the night of January 17–18, 2015, 22-year-oldChanel Miller,who was visiting the campus to attend a party at theKappa Alphafraternity, 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.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 graduateAaron 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.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

Main articles:List of Stanford University alumniandList of Stanford University faculty and staff

Award laureates and scholars

For a more comprehensive list, seeList of Nobel laureates affiliated with Stanford University.

Stanford's current community of scholars includes:

• 2Presidential Medal of Freedomwinners;
• 2ACLLifetime Achievement Award winners;
• 3 recipients of theNational Medal of Technology;
• 4Pulitzer Prizewinners;
• 6 recipients of theNational Humanities Medal;
• 7Wolf Foundation Prizewinners;
• 10 recipients of theNational Medal of Science;
• 14AAAIfellows;
• 22Nobel Prizelaureates (as of 2022, 58 affiliates in total);
• 33MacArthur Fellows;
• 47 members ofAmerican Philosophical Society;
• 56 fellows of theAmerican Physics Society(since 1995);
• 90 members ofNational Academy of Medicine;
• 113 members ofNational Academy of Engineering;
• 174 members of theNational Academy of Sciences;
• 303 members of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Stanford's current and former faculty includes 58 Nobel laureates,as well as 29 winners of theTuring Award,the so-called "Nobel Prize in computer science", comprising one-third of theawards givenin its 44-year history. The university also has 27ACM Fellowsand is affiliated with fourGödel Prizewinners, fourKnuth Prizerecipients, tenIJCAI Computers and Thought Awardwinners, and fifteenGrace Murray Hopper Awardwinners for their work in the foundations of computer science. Stanford alumni have started many companies and, according toForbes,Stanford has produced the second highest number of billionaires of all universities.By 2022, 128 Stanford students or alumni have also been namedRhodes Scholars.

• Notable Stanford alumni include:
• 
  Herbert Hoover(BS 1895),President of the United States,founder of Hoover Institution at Stanford. Trustee of Stanford for nearly 50 years.
• 
  William Rehnquist(BA 1948, MA 1948, LLB 1952) 16thChief Justice of the United States
• 
  Sandra Day O'Connor(BA 1950, LLB 1952), FormerAssociate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
• 
  Rishi Sunak(MBA 2006), FormerPrime Minister of the United Kingdom
• 
  Yukio Hatoyama(PhD 1976), FormerPrime Minister of Japan
• 
  Stephen Breyer(BA 1959), FormerAssociate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
• 
  Larry Page(MS 1998), founder ofAlphabet Inc.
• 
  Sergey Brin(MS 1995), founder ofAlphabet Inc.
• 
  Reed Hastings(MS 1988), founder ofNetflix Inc.
• 
  Phil Knight(MBA 1962), founder ofNike Inc.
• 
  Reid Hoffman(BS 1990), founder ofLinkedIn Corporation

• Notable present and past Stanford faculty include:
• 
  Philip Zimbardo
• 
  Tobias Wolff
• 
  Condoleezza Rice

See also

• List of universities by number of billionaire alumni
• List of colleges and universities in California
• S*,a collaboration between seven universities and theKarolinska Institutefor training in bioinformatics and genomics
• Stanford School

Further reading

• Mirrielees, Edith R.Stanford: the Story of a University(1959), popular history.
• Mohr, James C. "Academic turmoil and public opinion: The Ross case at Stanford."Pacific Historical Review39.1 (1970): 39–61. Economist was fired in 1900 for his liberalism.online.
• Leslie, Stuart W. "Playing the education game to win: The military and interdisciplinary research at Stanford."Historical studies in the physical and biological sciences18.1 (1987): 55–88.online.
• Davis, Margo Baumgartner, and Roxanne Nilan.The Stanford album: a photographic history, 1885–1945(Stanford University Press, 1989).
• Altenberg, Lee.Beyond Capitalism: Leland Stanford's Forgotten Vision(Stanford Historical Society, 1990).
• Lowen, Rebecca S. "Transforming the university: Administrators, physicists, and industrial and federal patronage at Stanford, 1935–49."History of Education Quarterly31.3 (1991): 365–388.
• Lowen, Rebecca S. "'Exploiting a Wonderful Opportunity': The Patronage of Scientific Research at Stanford University, 1937–1965."Minerva(1992): 391–421.online.
• Kargon, Robert, and Stuart Leslie. "Imagined geographies: Princeton, Stanford and the boundaries of useful knowledge in postwar America."Minerva(1994): 121–143.
• Leslie, Stuart W.The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford,(Columbia University Press,1994).
• Lowen, Rebecca S., and R. S. Lowen,Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford,(University of California Press, 1997).
• Cuban, Larry. "Change without reform: the case of Stanford University School of Medicine, 1908–1990."American Educational Research Journal34.1 (1997): 83–122.
• Fetter Jean.Questions and Admissions: Reflections on 100,000 Admissions Decisions at Stanford(1997),ISBN0-8047-3158-6
• Fenyo, Ken,The Stanford Daily 100 Years of Headlines(2003),ISBN0-9743654-0-8
• Gillmor, C. Stewart.Fred Terman at Stanford: Building a discipline, a university, and Silicon Valley(Stanford UP, 2004)online.
• Adams, Stephen B. "Stanford and Silicon Valley: Lessons on becoming a high-tech region."California management review48.1 (2005): 29–51.
• Joncas, Ricard, David Neumann, and Paul V. Turner.The Campus Guide: Stanford University.Princeton Architectural Press,2006.doi:10.1007/1-56898-664-5.ISBN978-1-56898-538-1(print);ISBN978-1-56898-664-7(online).
• Lyman, Richard W.Stanford in turmoil: Campus unrest, 1966–1972(Stanford University Press, 2009)online.
• Nash, George H.Herbert Hoover and Stanford University(Hoover Press, 2015)online.
• Nilan, Roxanne L., and Cassius L. Kirk Jr.Stanford's Wallace Sterling: Portrait of a Presidency 1949–1968(Stanford Up, 2023), a major scholarly history.see description.
• Tarnoff, Ben. "Better, Faster, Stronger" (review of John Tinnell,The Philosopher of Palo Alto: Mark Weisner, Xerox PARC, and the Original Internet of Things,University of Chicago Press, 347 pp.; andMalcolm Harris,Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World,Little, Brown, 708 pp.),The New York Review of Books,vol. LXX, no. 14 (21 September 2023), pp. 38–40. "[Palo Alto is] a place where the [United States'] contradictions are sharpened to their finest points, above all the defining and enduring contradictions betweendemocratic principleand antidemocratic practice. There is nothing as American as celebratingequalitywhile subverting it. Or asCalifornian."(p. 40.)

External links

• Official website
• Stanford Athletics websiteArchivedApril 1, 2015, at theWayback Machine
• Texts on Wikisource:
  • "Leland Stanford Jr. University".Encyclopædia Britannica(11th ed.). 1911.
  • "Leland Stanford Junior University".Encyclopedia Americana.1920.
  • "Leland Stanford, Junior, University".Collier's New Encyclopedia.1921.