Stanford University

Leland Stanford Junior University, or more commonly Stanford University, is a private research university in Stanford, California, and one of the world's most prestigious institutions,  with the highest undergraduate selectivity  and fundraising performance  in the United States.

Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland Stanford, former governor of and U.S. senator from California and leading railroad tycoon, and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford was opened on October 1, 1891 as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Tuition was free until 1920. The university struggled financially after Leland Stanford's 1893 death and after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. 

Stanford is located in northern Silicon Valley near Palo Alto, California. The University's academic departments are organized into seven schools, and its 8,180-acre (3,310 ha) campus is one of the largest of its kind in the United States with several other holdings, such as laboratories and nature reserves, located outside the main campus.The University is the top fundraising institution in the country, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.

Stanford's undergraduate program is the most selective in the country with an acceptance rate of 5.07% for the 2018 Class. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the University is one of two private institutions in the Division I FBS Pacific-12 Conference. It has gained 105 NCAA championships, the second-most for a university, and has won the NACDA Directors' Cup every year since 1994-1995.

Ranking

Stanford occupies the number one position in numerous domestic college ranking measures, leading Slate to dub Stanford "the Harvard of the 21st century, and The New York Times to conclude that "Stanford University has become America’s 'it' school".From polls done by The Princeton Review in 2010, 2013 and 2014, Stanford is the most commonly named "dream college" for both students and parents (and in 2011 for students), while a 2003 Gallup poll found that Stanford is the second-most prestigious university in the eyes of the general public.

The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings placed it third in 2014, and it has particularly held its second place for many years in the Academic Ranking of World Universities.