The University enrolls approximately 6,500 undergraduates and 7,300 grad students. Stanford has a reputation among students as
being a relaxed, fun-loving, warm-weather alternative to the Ivy League schools
of the east coast. 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.Admission is extremely competitive, and according to
The Atlantic
Monthly, it is the sixth-most selective college in the United States (after MIT, Princeton, Caltech,
Yale and Harvard).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.L.A. and ENG.The University has approximately 1,700 faculty members, including 17 Nobel laureates and 23 MacArthur fellows.
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 built its international reputation as the pioneering Silicon
Valley institution through top programs in engineering and the sciences, and birthed companies such Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, Yahoo!, Google and Sun Microsystems—indeed, "Sun" originally stood for "Stanford University Network." The
university also offers world-class programs in the humanities, particularly creative writing, history, government, economics and psychology.