Stanford University: meet the mother University of Google and Nike

Leland Stanford Junior University, better known as Stanford University, is considered one of the five most prestigious American universities in the world. Founded in 1891 by former California governor and Senator Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, Stanford University was named in honor of the couple's son, who had died years earlier.

Known as the University of entrepreneurs, it has among its alumni and professors the founders of large companies such as HP, Google, Yahoo and Nike. Located in the Palo Alto area of California's Silicon Valley, Stanford attracts the most creative minds and drives the creation of dozens of tech startups each year.

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The university, by the way, is one of the “mothers” of the internet. In the 1970s, it was one of four U.S. institutions linked to the ARPANET system, considered the precursor to the internet. Here's Everything You Need To Know About Stanford University!

Stanford University in numbers

Stanford University has about 17,000 students — approximately 7,000 undergraduates, and another 9,500 undergraduates. There are also students in non-higher level courses such as certificates and extensions.

The university has about 4.2 thousand foreign students (only 650 of them are undergraduates), which gives a rate of about 24% of students from other countries. The university does not say how many countries are representing on its campus, but claims to receive applications from more than 150 countries every year.

Stanford University is guaranteed presence in the highest rankings of quality of Education:

3rd place in The Times Higher Education World University Rankings

5th place in the QS World University Rankings

2nd place in Shanghai Ranking

Professors and alumni have won 36 Nobel prizes, among them Paul Berg, responsible for creating the first methods of mapping DNA structures, and Martin Perl, physicist who proved the existence of neutrinos.

Currently 19 Award winners teach at the University. Not to mention the other 19 professors who have received the Turing Award, considered the Nobel Prize in computing, and 4 who have received the Pulitzer Prize.

Stanford also took the first position in the rankings of the most beautiful campuses in the United States. With more than 3 thousand hectares, it is one of the largest in the United States and houses, in addition to university facilities, also a complete student residence system.

Courses offered

The university is organized into seven schools: the schools of Humanities and Sciences, of Engineering, and of “Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences” have both undergraduate and graduate courses. The schools of Law, Medicine, Education, and business have only graduate programs.

In addition to these, dozens of free courses are also offered in the most diverse areas.

Selection Process

The selection process is typical of universities in the United States and requires, in addition to academic history and standardized test scores, also letters of recommendation and motivation. The Stanford degree is considered one of the most selective in the United States – of the 19,000 students who apply annually, only 12.7% are admitted – of which about 5% are foreigners.

Check here the essay that helped this Brazilian to be admitted by the institution

The annual costs to study at the institution are in the US$ 65 thousand. However, most American families with incomes below $ 125,000 a year are exempt from paying an annuity.

This is because the institution has an excellent patrimonial fund of almost$ 16 billion and is one of the universities that raises the most funds through donations in the United States. At graduation, it has a need-based financial support policy and its average value of scholarships for international students is$ 30 thousand.

The selection process for foreigners, however, is need-aware — but 64% of international students receive some form of financial aid. One of them is the Bahian Georgia Gabriela, who was accepted with a full scholarship by the University on her second attempt. “The first time, in the third year [of high school], it didn't work. But it was an experience that taught me a lot in practice: what I would have to do and what I would have to face in order to be accepted,” she explains.

For graduate students at Stanford University, Admission is decentralized. That is, Applications must be sent directly to the school in question. At the age of 25, Ana Beatriz Pousada from São Paulo was accepted for a doctorate in economics at the University, which receives more than 700 applications per year and whose initial classes are formed by only 25 students.

For her, the most challenging part was writing a letter saying why she would make an excellent PhD student. “I had to make several versions of the text. I asked colleagues and family members to read my drafts. They pointed out what I could improve on and points where I was being very humble. Finally, I was able to come up with a version of the text that satisfied me,” he recalls. Check out the full interview.

Scholarships to Stanford University

Stanford University offers financial aid to foreign students who need it to pay for their studies. On this page, you can see more information about the support programs offered by the university itself. Students interested in applying to these programs should indicate this at the time of application.

In graduate school, the university also offers a full scholarship program that has more than$ 750 million in investment. Knight-Hennessy Scholars is a program for high-potential students from all backgrounds. It is usually open for applications between May and October each year. Learn more about him here.

PUBLICIDADE

The Stanford entrapment experiment

Unfortunately, Stanford is also remembered for a particularly unfortunate episode: the so-called Stanford Prison Experiment. The experiment in question was a supposedly scientific research of social Psychology, led by professor Philip Zimbardo.

Zimbardo's idea was to simulate, under controlled conditions, the environment of a prison. To do this, he recruited participants willing to spend two weeks on the survey. The participants were randomly divided into two groups, the “inmates” and the “guards”. The aim was to determine the psychological effects on people who became “prisoners” or “guards”. The experiment was funded by the U.S. Secretary of naval Research.

PUBLICIDADE Initially, the experiment would last two weeks, in August 1971, at Stanford's Jordan Hall. However, he almost immediately created problems. Cases of aggression and psychological abuse of the “guards” over the “prisoners” were common, raising ethical questions about the experiment. In addition, it was not possible to maintain scientific rigor about the project, which invalidated any investigative conclusions it might have.

In the end, the experiment was stopped after six days. Since then, the U.S. government and scientific committees have increased the requirement for ethical controls on human experiments. The anecdotal evidence he generated is that violence in environments such as prisons is not due to characteristics of the individual, but to the very social system of these spaces. In 2015, a documentary film about the experiment was released under the name the Stanford Prison Experiment.

When was Stanford founded?

Stanford was founded in 1891 by former California governor and Senator Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford. The university was named in honor of the couple's son, who had died years earlier.