Academics

Learning at Stanford

Stanford creatively combines the intimate intellectual characteristics of a liberal arts college with the vast academic resources found only at a leading research institution. An undergraduate journey at Stanford helps ready you for a life and career of your choosing and deepens your ability to think critically, engage with life’s complexities, and adapt to inevitable change.

Strength Across Disciplines

Students who enjoy learning for its own sake thrive at Stanford. We seek students who have selected a rigorous academic experience and achieved distinction in a range of areas. With an approximate 6-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio, Stanford emphasizes close student and faculty interaction. Stanford offers three undergraduate degrees: Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Sciences and Bachelor of Arts and Sciences. Each is designed to achieve balance between depth of knowledge acquired through specialization and breadth of knowledge gained through exploration. Three of Stanford’s seven schools award undergraduate degrees: Humanities and Sciences; Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences; and Engineering.

At Stanford, students are encouraged to be curious, explore interests, try new things. Majors don’t need to be declared until the spring quarter of sophomore year. We invite you to find your own Stanford by exploring a wide array of opportunities.

Find your own Stanford

Explore disciplines at Stanford

Explore majors at Stanford

A Shared Foundation

Stanford’s undergraduate general requirements help build a shared foundation for students to own knowledge, hone capacities, develop personal and social responsibility, and learn to adapt knowledge and skills developed in one setting to new challenges and circumstances.

These requirements are an integral part of your academic journey and the core of your distinct liberal education at Stanford. These foundational classes foreground important questions and illustrate how they may be approached from multiple perspectives. Students can develop essential intellectual and social competencies that will be of enduring value in any field. The requirements are flexible and allow students to select topics of interest, while building critical skills, forming relationships with faculty and peers, and forging connections across disciplines.

COLLEGE – COLLEGE is more than just shorthand for the first-year Civic, Liberal, and Global Education requirement: it signals the purpose of the courses, and a vision for what a college experience can be. Going to college is not just about acquiring the ability to make a living, but about exploring what makes living worthwhile. It’s also about developing the skills that empower and enable us to live together: in our own communities, in a diverse nation, and in a globally connected society.

Ways of Thinking / Ways of Doing – Learn to “think and “do” in new ways to help you discover the complexities and challenges awaiting you at Stanford and beyond.

Writing and Rhetoric – Hone your skills in writing and speaking, which are central to intellectual inquiry, to professional achievement, and to global citizenship.

Language – We believe language study significantly extends our range of knowledge and expression.

Meet Our Faculty

Scholarship is at its best when it draws upon a diverse community. When individuals are exposed to novel perspectives from a broader group, their thoughts become more creative, and they generate innovative solutions they might not have otherwise considered. Stanford faculty work closely with students and conduct groundbreaking research. They are leaders in their fields with their accomplishments recognized across the disciplines. Here, Stanford faculty members share their breadth of life experiences and interests that fuel the dynamic learning environment on campus.

Learning & Discovery

Stanford students enjoy countless opportunities for learning and discovery during their educational journey.

Explore new paths. Introductory Seminars help first-year students explore different academic disciplines in diverse courses taught by faculty from 60 departments across all Stanford schools. Sophomore College offers three-week, residential September seminars to rising sophomores who share a passion for an area of study. Arts Intensive students are housed together for three weeks in September and engage in the theory and practice of an artistic discipline.
Learn by doing. Inquiry, discovery and investigation are at the heart of Stanford’s mission, including through Undergraduate Research. Stanford faculty are engaged in groundbreaking original scholarship, and by joining faculty in their efforts, students get to realize the full intellectual richness of an undergraduate education at Stanford. In 2018–19, about $6.03 million was allocated for grant programs benefiting 1,024 projects. Almost 90 students conducted research overseas.
Gain a deeper understanding of the world. Regardless of the academic path you choose, achieving cultural literacy and gaining substantive understanding of other perspectives in the world will deepen your awareness of yourself, your educational goals, and your own society. Over one-half of each graduating class studies away through Bing Overseas Studies Program. Students can also access dynamic domestic opportunities in New York, Washington D.C., and Hawaii, as well as unique experiences closer to campus at Hopkins Marine Station and Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.
Grow through Experience. Undergraduates can gain hands-on experience through a Seed Transformation Program summer internship offered by Stanford Seed at the Graduate School of Business. Interns work in a small to mid-size company in an emerging economy in Africa or India.
Apply knowledge to real-world problems. Through Stanford’s Cardinal Service initiative, you can work with renowned faculty across disciplines through community engaged learning (service-learning) courses addressing complex social and environmental issues. Choose from more than 150 innovative classes that integrate rigorous coursework with service experience in the fields of education, engineering, environment, health, human rights and identity.
Enrich your outlook. With a network of 20 libraries, Stanford Libraries offers students resources to explore, investigate and collaborate. Stanford libraries have destinations for quiet and collaborative study, and special collections such as the Silicon Valley Archives, the David Rumsey Map Collection, the Bob Fitch Photography Archive of major social justice movements, Chinese Comic Books and University Archives. Get a sense of what awaits you on the Farm and explore over 100 digital collections online.