Stanford University

Stanford University, formally Leland Stanford Junior University, is a privately run research university located in Stanford, California, in the United States. Railroad magnate Leland Stanford and his wife Jane founded it in 1885 in memory of their only child, who died of typhoid at 15, and it admitted its first students in 1891 as a coeducational, non-denominational school. Its 8,180-acre campus, one of the largest in the US, is organised into seven schools.

QS ranks Stanford No. 2 in its World University Rankings 2027, up from No. 3 in 2026 (overall score 98.9), and ShanghaiRanking's ARWU 2026 also places it No. 2. CWUR (2026), Times Higher Education (World University Rankings 2027) and U.S. News & World Report (Best Global Universities 2026-2027) each rank it No. 3. In CWUR's breakdown it is 10th for education, 4th for employability and 3rd for both faculty and research.

After World War II, provost Frederick Terman encouraged an entrepreneurial culture that helped give rise to Silicon Valley, and in 1951 the university opened Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto, the world's first university research park. Stanford is also home to the Hoover Institution, a think tank on public policy. Wikipedia lists 60 Nobel laureates and 29 Turing Award winners among people associated with the university, and its students and alumni have won 302 Olympic medals.

Sources of this text: Wikipedia · Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) · ShanghaiRanking Consultancy · Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) · Times Higher Education · U.S. News & World Report