Everything about Stanford totally explained
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as
Stanford University or simply
Stanford, is a
private university located approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) southeast of
San Francisco and approximately 20 miles (32 km) northwest of
San Jose in
Stanford,
California,
United States. Stanford is situated adjacent to the city of
Palo Alto, on the
San Francisco Peninsula.
History
Stanford was founded by
railroad magnate and
California Governor Leland Stanford and his wife,
Jane Stanford. It is named in honor of their only child,
Leland Stanford, Jr., who died of
typhoid just before his 16th birthday.
The story that a lady in "faded gingham" and a man in a "homespun threadbare suit" went to visit the president of
Harvard about making a donation, were rebuffed, and then founded Stanford is untrue.
Locals and members of the university community are known to refer to the school as
The Farm, a nod to the fact that the university is located on the former site of Leland Stanford's horse farm.
The University's founding grant was written on
November 11,
1885, and accepted by the first Board of Trustees on
November 14. The cornerstone was laid on
May 14,
1887, and the University officially opened on
October 1,
1891, to 559 students and 15 faculty members, seven of whom hailed from
Cornell University. At the opening of the school, there was no tuition for students, a program which lasted into the 1930s
(External Link
). Among the first class of students was a young future president
Herbert Hoover, who would claim to be first student
ever at Stanford, by virtue of having been the first person in the first class to sleep in the dormitory.
The school was established as a
coeducational institution although it maintained a cap on female enrollment for many years. This wasn't due to any anti-female sentiment but rather based on a concern of Jane Stanford, who worried that without such a cap, the school could become an all-female institution, which she didn't feel would be an appropriate memorial for her son.
The
1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed parts of the Main Quad (including the original iteration of
Memorial Church) as well as the gate that first marked the entrance of the school; rebuilding on a somewhat less grandiose scale began immediately.
The official motto of Stanford University, selected by the Stanfords, is "
Die Luft der Freiheit weht." Translated from the
German, this quotation of
Ulrich von Hutten means "The wind of freedom blows." At the time of the school's establishment, German had recently replaced
Latin as the supraregional language of science and philosophy.
Campus
Stanford University owns 8,183 acres (32 km²). The main campus is bounded by
El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue, Junipero Serra Boulevard and
Sand Hill Road, in the northwest part of the
Santa Clara Valley on the
San Francisco Peninsula.
It is sometimes asserted that Stanford University occupies the largest university campus in the world, in terms of contiguous area, and this may be true.
Moscow State University, which is built vertically and has a large floor area, is the largest university, but occupies a smaller piece of land.
Berry College occupies 28,000 acres (110 km²) of contiguous land, and
Paul Smith's College occupies of land in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, but neither is a university.
Duke University occupies 8,709 acres (35.2 km²), but they're not contiguous. The
United States Air Force Academy has a contiguous 18,000 acres (73 km²) at its disposal, but it isn't a university.
Dartmouth College, with a large
land grant, owns more than 50,000 acres (200 km²), but only 269 of those are part of the campus.
In the summer of 1886, when the campus was first being planned, Stanford brought the president of
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Francis Amasa Walker, and prominent
Boston landscape architect
Frederick Law Olmsted westward for consultations. Olmsted worked out the general concept for the campus and its buildings, rejecting a hillside site in favor of the more practical flatlands.
Charles Allerton Coolidge then developed this concept in the style of his late mentor,
Henry Hobson Richardson, in the
Richardsonian Romanesque style, characterized by rectangular stone buildings linked by arcades of half-circle arches. The original campus was also designed in the Spanish-colonial style common to California known as
Mission Revival. The red tile roofs and solid
sandstone masonry hold a distinctly Californian appearance and most of the subsequently erected buildings have maintained consistent exteriors. The red tile roofs and bright blue skies common to the region are a famously complementary combination.
Much of this first construction was destroyed by the
1906 San Francisco earthquake but the University retains the Quad, the old Chemistry Building and Encina Hall (the residence of
Herbert Hoover,
John Steinbeck, and
Anthony Kennedy during their times at Stanford). After the 1989
Loma Prieta earthquake inflicted further damage, the University implemented a billion-dollar capital improvement plan to retrofit and renovate older buildings for new, up-to-date uses.
Stanford University is actually its own
census-designated place which is part of
unincorporated Santa Clara County though some of the university land is within the city limits of Palo Alto. For many intents and purposes it can be considered a part of the city of Palo Alto; they share the same
school district and
fire department though the police forces are separate. 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 and campus phone numbers start with 723, 724, 725, 736, 497, or 498.
The
physicist Werner Heisenberg was once asked if he knew where Stanford University was located. "I believe it's on the west coast of the United States, not far from San Francisco. There is also another school nearby, and they steal each other's axes," he replied, referring to Stanford's rivalry with the
University of California, Berkeley.
Off campus
The off-campus
Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a nature reserve owned by the university and used by wildlife biologists for research.
Hopkins Marine Station, located in
Pacific Grove, California, is a
marine biology research center owned by the university since 1892. The University also has its own golf course and a seasonal lake (
Lake Lagunita, actually an irrigation reservoir), both home to the endangered
California Tiger Salamander.
Landmarks
Contemporary campus landmarks include the
Main Quad and
Memorial Church, the
Cantor Center for Visual Arts and
art gallery, the
Stanford Mausoleum and the
Angel of Grief,
Hoover Tower, the
Rodin sculpture garden, the
Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden, the
Arizona Cactus Garden, the
Stanford University Arboretum,
Green Library and
the Dish.
Frank Lloyd Wright's 1937
Hanna-Honeycomb House and the 1919
Lou Henry and Herbert Hoover House are both
National Historic Landmarks now on university grounds.
Institutions
Stanford University is governed by a board of trustees, in conjunction with the university president, provosts, faculty senate, and the deans of the various schools. Besides the university, the Stanford trustees oversee
Stanford Research Park, the
Stanford Shopping Center, the
Cantor Center for Visual Arts,
Stanford University Medical Center and many associated medical facilities (including the
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital), as well as many acres of undeveloped foothills.
Other Stanford-affiliated institutions include the
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and the
Stanford Research Institute, a now-independent institution which originated at the University, in addition to the
Stanford Humanities Center.
Stanford also houses the
Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, a major
public policy think tank that attracts visiting scholars from around the world, and the
Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which is dedicated to the more specific study of
international relations. Apparently because it couldn't locate a copy in any of its libraries, the
Soviet Union was obliged to ask the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, at Stanford University, for a microfilm copy of its original edition of the first issue of
Pravda (dated
March 5,
1917).
The Stanford University Libraries hold a collection of more than eight million volumes. The main library in the SU library system is
Green Library.
Meyer Library holds the vast
East Asia collection and the student-accessible media resources. Other significant collections include the Lane Medical Library, Terman Engineering Library, Jackson Business Library, Falconer Biology Library, Cubberley Education Library, Branner Earth Sciences Library, Swain Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Library, Jonsson Government Documents collection, Crown Law Library, the Stanford Auxiliary Library (SAL), the SLAC Library, the Hoover library, the Miller Marine Biology Library at Hopkins Marine Station, the Music Library, and the University's special collections. There are 19 libraries in all.
Digital libraries and text services include
HighWire Press, the Humanities Digital Information Services group and the Media Microtext Center. Several academic departments and some residences also have their own libraries.
Stanford is a founding and charter member of
CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, the nonprofit organization which provides extremely high-performance Internet-based networking to California's K-20 research and education community.
Academics
The schools of the University include the
School of Humanities and Sciences,
School of Engineering,
School of Earth Sciences,
School of Education,
Graduate School of Business,
Stanford Law School and the
Stanford University School of Medicine.
Stanford awards the following degrees:
B.A.,
B.S.,
B.A.S.,
M.A.,
M.S.,
Ph.D.,
D.M.A.,
Ed.D.,
Ed.S.,
M.D.,
M.B.A.,
J.D.,
J.S.D.,
J.S.M.,
LL.M.,
M.A.T.,
M.F.A.,
M.L.S.,
M.S.M. and
ENG.
The University enrolls approximately 6,700 undergraduates and 8,000 graduate students. The University has approximately 1,700 faculty members. The largest part of the faculty (40 percent) are affiliated with the medical school, while a third serve in the School of Humanities and Sciences.
Stanford's current community of scholars includes: 18
Nobel Prize laureates; 135 members of the
National Academy of Sciences;
82 members of
National Academy of Engineering;
224 members of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences;
21 recipients of the
National Medal of Science;
three recipients of the
National Medal of Technology;
26 members of the
National Academy of Education;
41 members of
American Philosophical Society;
4
Pulitzer Prize winners;
23
MacArthur Fellows;
7
Wolf Foundation Prize winners;
7
Koret Foundation Prize winners;
7
Presidential Medal of Freedom winners.
Stanford built its international reputation as the pioneering
Silicon Valley institution through top programs in business,
engineering and the
sciences, spawning such companies as
Hewlett-Packard,
Cisco Systems,
VMware,
Yahoo!,
Google, and
Sun Microsystems—indeed, "Sun" originally stood for "Stanford University Network." In addition, the
Stanford Research Institute operated one of the four original nodes that comprised
ARPANET, predecessor to the
Internet. The university also offers distinguished programs in the humanities and social sciences, particularly
American studies,
creative writing,
history,
political science,
economics,
communication,
music, and
psychology.
Admission and rankings
- Stanford University's undergraduate program is ranked fourth among national universities by U.S. News and World Report (USNWR).,
- Stanford University is ranked second among world universities and second among universities in the Americas by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, nineteenth among world universities in the THES-QS World University Rankings,, seventh among national universities by The Washington Monthly, second among "global universities" by Newsweek, and in the first-tier among national universities by The Center for Measuring University Performance. Stanford University also participates in the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU)'s University and College Accountability Network (U-CAN).
- Stanford received $911 million in private donations for the year ended August 31, 2006, the most of all U.S. universities and seventh highest of all charities.
- Stanford announced recently that it would use some of its endowment to cover the $36,000-a-year tuition for students whose families make under $100,000 a year. For students with family income under $60,000, living costs will also be paid.
Selectivity
Stanford is one of the most selective universities in the U.S. In 2006, Stanford's
undergraduate admission rate was 10.8 percent, from a pool of 22,223 applicants—the lowest rate of undergraduate admission in the history of the university until this year.The acceptance rates at the university's law school (7.7 percent), medical school (3.3 percent), and business school (7.9 percent) are also among the lowest in the country.
For the Class of 2011, Stanford admitted 10.29 percent of an undergraduate applicant pool of 23,956 students. The entering
transfer class of 2009 was 20 students, with a
selectivity rate of 1.4 percent.
For the Class of 2012, Stanford admitted 2,400 students from a undergraduate applicant pool of 25,298 candidates, resulting in an overall admissions rate of 9.49%, the lowest percentage in University history.
Arts
Stanford University is home to the
Cantor Center for Visual Arts 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. Notably, the Center possesses the largest collection of Rodin works outside of Paris, France. There are also a large number of outdoor art installations throughout the campus, primarily sculptures, but some murals as well. The Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden near Roble Hall features handmade wood carvings and "totem poles."
Stanford has a thriving artistic and musical community, including theater groups such as Ram's Head Theatrical Society and the Stanford Shakespeare Society, and award-winning
a cappella music groups, such as the
Mendicants, Counterpoint, Stanford Fleet Street Singers, Harmonics, Mixed Company, Testimony,
Talisman, and Everyday People.
Stanford's dance community is one of the most vibrant in the country, with an active dance division (in the Drama Department) and over 30 different dance-related student groups, including the
Stanford Band's
Dollie dance troupe.
Perhaps most distinctive of all is its
social and
vintage dance community, cultivated by dance historian
Richard Powers and enjoyed by hundreds of students and thousands of alumni. Stanford hosts monthly informal dances (called Jammix) and large quarterly dance events, including Ragtime Ball (fall), the Stanford Viennese Ball (winter), and Big Dance (spring). Stanford also boasts a student-run swing performance troupe called
Swingtime and several alumni performance groups, including Decadance and the Academy of Danse Libre.
The
creative writing program brings young writers to campus via the
Stegner Fellowships and other graduate scholarship programs.
This Boy's Life author
Tobias Wolff teaches writing to undergraduates and graduate students. Knight Journalism Fellows are invited to spend a year at the campus taking seminars and courses of their choice. There is also an extracurricular writing and performance group called the Stanford Spoken Word Collective, which also serves as the school's poetry slam team.
Stanford also hosts various publishing courses for professionals. Stanford Professional Publishing Course, which has been offered on campus since the late 1970s, brings together international publishing professionals to discuss changing business models in magazine and book publishing.
Faculty residences
One of the benefits of being a Stanford faculty member is the "Faculty Ghetto," where faculty members can live within walking or biking distance of campus. Similar to a
condominium, the houses can be bought and sold but the land under the houses is rented. The Faculty Ghetto is composed of land owned entirely by Stanford. A faculty member can't buy a lot, but he or she can buy a house, renting the underlying land on a 99-year lease. The cost of owning a house in
Silicon Valley remains high, however, and the average price of single family homes on campus is actually higher than in Palo Alto. The rapid capital gains of Silicon Valley landowners are enjoyed by Stanford, although Stanford, by the terms of its founding can't sell the land. Houses in the "Ghetto" may appreciate or may depreciate but not as rapidly as overall Silicon Valley land prices.
Student life
Stanford has been
coeducational since its founding; however, between approximately 1899 and 1933, there was a policy in place limiting female enrollment to 500 students and maintaining a ratio of three males for every one female student. By the late 1960s the "ratio" was about 2:1 for undergraduates and much more skewed at the graduate level, except in the humanities. As of 2005, undergraduate enrollment is split nearly evenly between the sexes, but male enrollees outnumber female enrollees about 2:1 at the graduate level.
Student government
The
Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) is the student government for Stanford University. 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.
Dormitories and student housing
Stanford places a strong focus on residential education. Approximately 98 percent of undergraduate students live in on-campus university housing, with another five percent living in Stanford housing at the overseas campuses. According to the Stanford Housing Assignments Office, undergraduates live in 77 different houses, including dormitories, co-ops, row houses, fraternities and sororities. Residences are located generally just outside the campus core, within ten minutes (on foot or bike) of most classrooms and libraries. Some residences are for freshmen only; others give priority to sophomores, others to both freshmen and sophomores; some are available for upperclass students only, and some are open to all four classes. All residences are coed except for seven all-male
fraternities, three all-female
sororities, and one all-female 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. In April 2008, Stanford unveiled a new pilot plan to test out gender-neutral housing in five campus residences, allowing males and females to live in the same room. This was after concerted student pressure, as well as the institution of similar policies peer institutions such as Wesleyan, Oberlin, Clark, Dartmouth, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania.
Several residences are considered theme houses, with a cross-cultural, academic/language, or focus theme. Examples include
Chicano themed Casa Zapata,
French language oriented French House, and arts focused Kimball.
Another famous style of housing at Stanford are the co-ops. These houses feature cooperative living, where residents and eating associates each contribute work to keep the house running. Students often help cook meals for the co-op, or clean the shared spaces. The coops are Chi Theta Chi, Columbae, Enchanted Broccoli Forest (EBF), Hammarskjöld (which is also the International Theme House), Kairos, Terra, and the Synergy cooperative house.
At any time, around 50 percent of the graduate population lives on campus. When construction concludes on the new Munger graduate residence, this percentage will probably increase. First-year graduate students are guaranteed housing, assuming they're willing to take anything.
Traditions
Full Moon on the Quad: A student gathering in the Main Quad of the university. Traditionally, seniors exchange kisses with freshmen, although students of all four classes (as well as the occasional graduate student or stranger) have been known to participate.
Sunday Flicks: Watching a film on Sunday night in Memorial Auditorium. Usually involves paper airplanes or simply throwing wads of newspaper.
Steam-tunnelling: Exploring the steam tunnels under the Stanford campus
Fountain-hopping: Cavorting in any of Stanford's many fountains (such as the Claw in White Plaza)
Big Game events: Including Big Game Gaieties (a student-written, composed, and produced musical), which is the week before and including the Big Game vs. UC Berkeley.
Primal scream: Performed by stressed students at midnight during Dead Week
Midnight Breakfast: During Winter quarter dead week, Stanford faculty serves breakfast to students in several locations on campus (you might see a vice-provost refilling orange juice, etc.)
Viennese Ball: a formal ball with waltzes which was started in the 1970s by students returning from the now closed Stanford in Vienna program.
The Stanford Powwow: Organized by the Stanford American Indian Organization and held every Mother's Day weekend.
Mausoleum Party: Halloween Party at the Stanford family mausoleum. It was on hiatus from 2001 to 2005 due to the fear that the festivities would further deteriorate the conditions of the mausoleum, but was revived in 2006.
Stanford Dance Marathon: A 24-hour dance-a-thon which raises money for Partners in Health and was started in 2004.
Senior Pub Night: On most Thursdays during the school year, seniors gather together at a bar in Palo Alto or San Francisco. The location rotates week to week, and chartered buses are organized to take the seniors safely between the bar and campus.
Uncommon Man/Uncommon Woman: Stanford doesn't award honorary degrees, but in 1953 the university created the degree of Uncommon Man/Uncommon Woman for persons that give rare and extraordinary service to the university. The university's highest honor, the degree isn't given at prescribed intervals, but only when appropriate to recognize extraordinary service. Recipients include Herbert Hoover, Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard, Lucille Salter Packard, and John Gardner.
Birthdays: Boys get thrown in the shower at midnight. For girls, such an ordeal isn't required, but may be arranged.
Older, now inactive traditions include the Big Game bonfire on Lake Lagunita (a seasonal lake usually dry in the fall) due to the presence of endangered salamanders.
Greek life
Stanford is home to three housed sororities (Pi Beta Phi, Kappa Alpha Theta, and Delta Delta Delta) and seven housed fraternities (Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Chi, Kappa Sigma, Kappa Alpha, Theta Delta Chi, Sigma Nu, Phi Kappa Psi), as well as a number of unhoused Greek organizations, such as Alpha Phi Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi, Omega Psi Phi, Phi Beta Sigma, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, Alpha Epsilon Pi, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Chi Omega, Delta Tau Delta, Alpha Kappa Psi, Sigma Theta Psi, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Lambda Phi Epsilon, alpha Kappa Delta Phi, Gamma Zeta Alpha and Sigma Psi Zeta. In contrast to many universities, all the Greek houses are on university land and in almost all cases the university also owns the house. As a condition to being recognized they also can't permit the national organization or others outside the university from having a veto over membership or local governance.
Athletics
Stanford participates in the NCAA's Division I-A and is a member of the Pacific-10 Conference. It also participates in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation for indoor track (men and women), water polo (men and women), women's gymnastics, women's lacrosse, men's gymnastics, and men's volleyball. Women's field hockey team is part of the NorPac Conference. Stanford's traditional sports rival is the University of California, Berkeley, its neighbor to the north in the East Bay.
Stanford offers 34 varsity sports (18 female, 15 male, one coed), 19 club sports and 37 intramural sports—about 800 students participate in intercollegiate sports. The University offers about 300 athletic scholarships.
The winner of the annual "Big Game" between the Cal and Stanford football teams gains custody of the Stanford Axe. Stanford's football team played in the first Rose Bowl in 1902. Stanford won back-to-back Rose Bowls in 1971 and 1972. Stanford has played in 12 Rose Bowls, most recently in 2000. Stanford's Jim Plunkett won the Heisman Trophy in 1970.
Club sports, while not officially a part of Stanford athletics, are numerous at Stanford. Sports include archery, badminton, cricket, cycling, equestrian, ice hockey, judo, kayaking, men's lacrosse, polo, racquetball, rugby union, squash, skiing, taekwondo, triathlon and Ultimate. The men's Ultimate team won a national championship in 2002, the women's Ultimate team in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2005, and 2006, and the women's rugby team in 1999, 2005, 2006 and 2008. The cycling team won the 2007 Division I USA Cycling Collegiate Road National Championships.
Until 1930, Stanford didn't have a "mascot" name for its athletic teams. In that year, the athletic department adopted the name "Indians." In 1972, "Indians" was dropped after a complaint of racial insensitivity was lodged by Native American students at Stanford.
The Stanford sports teams are now officially referred to as the Stanford Cardinal, referring to the deep red color, not the cardinal bird. Cardinal, and later cardinal and white has been the university's official color since the 19th century. The Band's mascot, "The Tree", has become associated with the school in general. Part of the Leland Stanford Junior (pause) University Marching Band (LSJUMB), the tree symbol derives from the El Palo Alto redwood tree on the Stanford and City of Palo Alto seals.
Stanford hosts an annual U.S. Open Series tennis tournament, the Bank of the West Classic) at Taube Stadium. Cobb Track, Angell Field, and Avery Stadium Pool are considered world-class athletic facilities.
Stanford has won the award for the top ranked collegiate athletic program—the NACDA Director's Cup, formerly known as the Sears Cup, every year for the past thirteen years. The Cup has been offered for fourteen years.
NCAA achievements: Stanford has earned 91 NCAA National Titles since its establishment, the second-most by any university; 74 NCAA National Titles since 1980, the most by any university; and 393 individual NCAA championships, the most by any university.
Olympic achievements: According to the Stanford Daily, "Stanford has been represented in every summer Olympiad since 1908." As of 2004, Stanford athletes had won 182 Olympic medals at the summer games; "In fact, in every Olympiad since 1912, Stanford athletes have won at least one and as many as 17 gold medals."
Notable alumni, faculty, and staff
Further Information
Get more info on 'Stanford'.
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