An estimated 13,000 bikes can be seen on Stanford University‘s campus each day, helping students stay active and manage their usually packed schedules at the private university near Palo Alto, one of the most selective undergraduate institutions in the country. Just over 5 percent of applicants earned a spot in the class of 2019.
But even though it’s an elite university, students seem to generally agree that Stanford is not a “four-year competition,” says recent grad Shelby Sinclair, a Milwaukee native who majored in comparative studies in race and ethnicity. Students work hard but preserve a healthy balance of fun and togetherness, she says.
Stanford’s 8,180-acre campus includes a number of sand- and rust-colored California Mission-inspired buildings, several dozen dining options and a Rodin Sculpture Garden. Up in the southern foothills, past the Main Quad, visitors can spot “the dish,” a 150-foot radio telescope.
Originally built on a horse farm, Stanford is a breeding ground for top tech talent for nearby Silicon Valley; alumni include the founders of Google, Netflix, Yahoo, Hewlett-Packard and LinkedIn, among others. Even though many students buy into the entrepreneurial mindset, that doesn’t define everyone.
“There isn’t one Stanford experience,” says recent grad Elodie Nierenberg, a Vancouver, Washington, native who majored in science, technology and society.
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While undergraduate majors in computer science, engineering and biology are among the most popular, you’re hardly “being shorted” in the arts, humanities and other disciplines, says senior Cassidy Elwood, an English and economics major from Arroyo Grande, California.
Stanford undergraduates can earn degrees from three of the university’s seven schools, where they can choose from more than 80 majors.
Thanks to a 4-to-1 student-faculty ratio, students can develop close relationships with professors, who don’t “just care about me going through the motions” of learning, says junior Alexa Haushalter, a mathematical and computational science major from Bellefontaine, Ohio.
Undergrads regularly host their instructors for dinners, and freshmen and sophomores can take 16-student introductory seminars taught by faculty. Overall, about 70 percent of classes have fewer than 20 undergrads.
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The workload is tough, but students also keep busy participating in 650-plus groups and organizations and following Stanford’s varsity sports teams, which have won the second most NCAA Division I championships in history, behind the University of California–Los Angeles.
To prevent them from being lost or overextended among so many options, undergrads have access to a wide range of resources, including academic directors assigned to all first-year residences and a number of community centers for academic help or social and cultural programming, such as the Native American Cultural Center and the Diversity and First-Gen Office.
“You’d almost have to actively try to not get help,” says Eric Mattson, a recent human biology grad originally from Lincoln, Nebraska.
More than 90 percent of undergrads live on “the farm,” as campus is affectionately known, along with a good number of faculty members and the university’s more than 9,000 grad students. Students have a host of housing options, from more traditional residence halls and apartments to co-ops — where students cook and clean — and themed houses like La Casa Italiana and the environmentally conscious Enchanted Broccoli Forest. About a quarter of undergraduates join fraternities and sororities.
Students talk about a “Stanford bubble,” which some say can be stifling at times, but the region offers plenty of ways to branch out. Groups like Stanford Outdoor Education coordinate regular backpacking and camping trips to Big Sur and Lake Tahoe, for instance, while San Francisco and San Jose are an easy ride away by commuter rail.
More From the San Francisco Bay Area College Road Trip:
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This story is excerpted from the U.S. News “Best Colleges 2016” guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
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San Francisco Bay Area College Road Trip: Stanford University originally appeared on usnews.com
