What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$0 to $53,882 a year, depending on income.
College Scorecard 2024 estimate
See the price at your income ↑Sticker price
Full cost before aid: $87,833 a year. Average need-based aid package: $75,816.Aid and debt
$28,507
average debt at graduation
14
students got merit aid
about 0% of undergraduates
$13,813
average merit award
Not reported by this school: share receiving need-based grants.
Getting In
Key dates
Test scores
SAT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 1520–1570 · 56% of the class submitted
ACT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 34–36 · 21% of the class submitted
97% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What they value
- Very important
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- Class rank
- GPA
- SAT/ACT scores
- Personal essay
- Recommendations
- Extracurriculars
- Special talent
- Character
- Considered
- First-gen status
- Legacy status
- Where you're from
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Not considered
- In-state residency
- Demonstrated interest
What this means for you
Stanford rates four things you can work on as Very Important: course rigor, your essay, your recommendations, and your activities.
MoreLess
Rigor means AP, IB, and dual enrollment carry real weight — make sure your mix of AP or IB courses is strong. The essay is weighted like your GPA. Choose recommenders who can be specific about you, not just confirm your transcript. And depth in a few activities beats a long list.
Stanford doesn't consider demonstrated interest in admissions at all — visits and follow-up emails won't move the needle here.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section C7 (admissions factors)
Stanford just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-Stanford essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
69.7% of Stanford classes have fewer than 20 students.
69.7%
under 20 students
17.6%
20 to 49
12.7%
50 or more
Every class section counts, labs and seminars included; first-year courses tend to be larger. Stanford CDS 2025–26, I-3.
10:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
93%
live on campus
22%
of men in fraternities
28%
of women in sororities
Who attends
- Asian30.4%
- White23.6%
- Hispanic15.7%
- Multiracial9%
- Black6.5%
- Unknown / other0.6%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. Stanford CDS 2025–26, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
45.3% of Stanford students graduate in 4 years.
45.3%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
91.6%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
97.46%
return after first year
Finishing late means paying for extra semesters, so the 4-year rate is the one that shows the cost.
Students with Pell Grants
89.5% finish in 6 years, against 91.6% of all students.
Pell Grant students finish at about the same rate as everyone else.
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.
MoreLess
Palo Alto sits at one edge and the venture capital of Sand Hill Road at another; San Francisco is about an hour north.
The City
College town
Stanford, CA
Best For
Notable alumni
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.
Traditions
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 from Stanford
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 and game days
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
Internships and jobs nearby
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
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.