At a Glance
Stanford admits 3.8% of applicants.
What You'll Actually Pay
See what families at different income levels actually pay after aid.
Net price data temporarily unavailable. Visit each school's net price calculator directly.
Where the Sticker Price Goes
Sticker price
Not reported by this school
Debt at Graduation
Not reported by this school
receive need-based grant aid
$28,507
average debt at graduation
Stanford graduates carry an average of $28,507 in debt.
Merit Aid
14
students received merit aid
$13,813
average merit award
Getting In
Stanford admits 3.8% of applicants.
SAT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 56% of the class submitted
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 21% of the class submitted
97% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
Stanford University rates your personal essay as Very Important — equal weight to your GPA. Don't underestimate it. Demonstrated interest is Not Considered here — campus visits and emails to admissions won't affect your odds.
Student Life
69.7% of Stanford classes have fewer than 20 students.
Share of undergraduate class sections at each size, from CDS Section I-3. More red = more large lectures.
At Stanford, 69.7% of your classes will have fewer than 20 students.
Class size data reflects all undergraduate sections including labs, seminars, and lectures. Large research universities often have smaller upper-division and graduate-level sections that improve the overall distribution. First and second-year students typically experience larger classes than these averages suggest.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section I-3 (class sizes)
10:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
Live on campus
93%
Men in fraternities
22%
Women in sororities
28%
Who Attends
Racial and ethnic breakdown of enrolled undergraduates, as reported in each school's Common Data Set. "Unknown / Other" includes students who did not report or selected "other."
Stanford's student body is 23.6% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
Stanford graduates 45.3% of students in 4 years.
Graduating late means paying for extra semesters. The 6-year rate tells you who eventually finishes — the 4-year rate tells you what it actually costs.
Stanford graduates 45.3% of students in 4 years.
What finishing late actually costs
Based on each school's published cost of attendance. Public school costs shown at in-state rates.
Stanford
45.3%
4-yr grad rate
Data pending
Graduation rate data from Common Data Set 2025–26, Fall 2018 cohort (most recent available). 4-year rate = students completing in 4 years or less. 6-year rate = students completing within 6 years.
91.6%
Overall 6-yr rate
89.5%
Pell recipient rate
Lower-income students graduate at nearly the same rate as their peers — a sign of strong institutional support.
Freshman Retention
97.46%
97.46% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Stanford.
An enormous campus of sandstone arcades and palm trees on the San Francisco Peninsula, more a town than a quad — bicycles are the normal way to cross it. Palo Alto sits at one edge and the venture capital of Sand Hill Road at another; San Francisco is about an hour north.
Notable Alumni
Sally Ride
First American woman in space, and later a physics professor. She took her bachelor's here in 1973 and her doctorate in 1978.
Class of 1978
John Steinbeck
Won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 for The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. He studied here intermittently through the 1920s and left without a degree.
Larry Page
Co-founded Google, which began as a doctoral research project here on ranking web pages. He arrived for the PhD in 1995 and left to build the company.
Tiger Woods
Won 15 major championships. He played here on a golf scholarship from 1994 and left after two years to turn professional.
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
College town
Stanford, CA
Best For
Traditions
Full Moon on the Quad
A first-year rite held under the first full moon of the academic year in the Main Quad, and one of the oldest continuous traditions here.
The Band
A scatter band rather than a marching one, famous for irreverence and for occasionally getting the university into trouble at away games.
Co-terminal degrees
Undergraduates routinely add a master's that overlaps their bachelor's, which is a large part of why the four-year graduation rate reads the way it does and why a fifth year is unremarkable here.
Big Game and the Axe
The rivalry with California, played since 1892, with a trophy axe that has twice been stolen outright.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Stanford
San Francisco
About an hourNorth up the peninsula by car or Caltrain, for the city students treat as their own.
Santa Cruz and the coast
About 45 minutesOver the mountains to the beach and the boardwalk.
Big Sur
About 2 hours 30 minutesCliffs above the Pacific and the redwoods on the way down.
Lake Tahoe
About 4 hoursSkiing in winter and the lake in summer — the long weekend everyone does at least once.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
San Francisco International (SFO)
About 30 minutes from campus
Flies international — you can start a trip abroad from here.
Pro sports nearby
- San Francisco 49ers NFL
- San Jose Sharks NHL
- Golden State Warriors NBA
- San Francisco Giants MLB
Career Proximity
The campus sits at the top of Silicon Valley, with Sand Hill Road's venture firms at the edge of it.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Apple
- Nvidia
- Stanford Health Care
- Meta
Palo Alto and Menlo Park, with San Francisco about an hour north
Who Thrives Here
Stanford admits 3.8%, the tightest rate in this catalog, and has reinstated the SAT or ACT requirement; the middle half of enrolled first-years scored 1520 to 1570. What deserves a family's attention is not the selectivity but the timeline. 45.3% of students graduate within four years and 91.6% within six — a gap driven by co-terminal master's degrees and leave years that Stanford treats as ordinary rather than exceptional. Nearly everyone finishes, and 97.5% come back for a second year; they just frequently do not finish in eight semesters, and the cost of a fifth year belongs in the plan from the start. Money is otherwise handled about as well as it can be: 100% of demonstrated need is met and graduates who borrow leave owing about $28,507. The teaching scale is real too, 69.7% of sections under 20 and a 10:1 ratio across 7,346 undergraduates. 93.0% live in university housing on a campus of 8,180 acres, so the place is residential and spread out at once, and the surrounding valley is close enough that starting something while still enrolled is a normal thing to do rather than a story.