by our College Data Analytics Team
In its yearly rankings, College Factual analyzes over 2,000 colleges and universities to determine which ones are the best in a variety of categories, such as overall value, quality, diversity, which schools are the best for each major, and much more.
Stanford University was awarded 135 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is civil engineering.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
Stanford is ranked #10 out of 2,152 schools in the nation for overall quality on College Factual's 2025 Best Colleges list. This puts it in the top 1% of all schools in the nation!
Stanford also holds the #1 spot on the Best Colleges in California ranking.
With an acceptance rate of 4%, Stanford is one of the most selective schools in the country. Good grades and high test scores alone may not be enough to get you into the school, so do your best to submit a stellar application.
About 49% of students accepted to Stanford submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 730 and 780. Math scores were between 770 and 800.
The student to faculty ratio at Stanford is an impressive 5 to 1. That's quite good when you compare it to the national average of 15 to 1. This is a good sign that students at the school will have more opportunities for one-on-one interactions with their professors.
When estimating how much access students will have to their teachers, some people like to look at what percentage of faculty members are full time. This is because part-time teachers may not have as much time to spend on campus as their full-time counterparts.
The full-time faculty percentage at Stanford University is 99%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
Stanford University has a freshmen retention rate of 98%. That's a good sign that full-time students like the school and their professors enough to want to stick around for another year. It's also a sign that the admissions team did a good job in choosing applicants who were a good fit for the school.
Students are considered to have graduated on time if they finish their studies within four years. At Stanford the on-time graduation rate of first-time, full-time students is 74%. That is great when compared to the national average of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Stanford University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 6,366 undergraduates at Stanford with 5,752 being full-time and 614 being part-time.
The net price is calculated by adding tuition, room, board and other costs and subtracting financial aid.Note that the net price is typically less than the published for a school. For more information on the sticker price of Stanford, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.
While almost two-thirds of students nationwide take out loans to pay for college, the percentage may be quite different for the school you plan on attending. At Stanford, approximately 7% of students took out student loans averaging $12,999 a year. That adds up to $51,996 over four years for those students.
See which majors at Stanford University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Stanford University.
Contact details for Stanford are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Phone: | 650-723-2300 |
| Website: | www.stanford.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Computer Science | 656 | $138,613 |
| Management Sciences & Quantitative Methods | 608 | NA |
| Electrical Engineering | 206 | NA |
| Mechanical Engineering | 197 | NA |
| Engineering-Related Fields | 193 | $100,788 |
| Law | 190 | NA |
| Civil Engineering | 181 | NA |
| Economics | 149 | $98,104 |
| Other Engineering | 126 | $49,741 |
| Biomedical Engineering | 115 | $50,487 |
Online courses area a great option for busy, working students as well as for those who have scheduling conflicts and want to study on their own time. As time goes by, expect to see more and more online learning options become available.
In 2022-2023, 1,067 students took at least one online class at Stanford University. This is an increase from the 864 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 1,067 | 288 |
| 2021-2022 | 864 | 0 |
| 2020-2021 | 936 | 0 |
| 2018-2019 | 877 | 0 |
If you’re considering Stanford University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Stanford? Pit them head to head with College Combat, our free interactive tool that lets you compare college on the features that matter most to you!
Footnotes
*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.
References
More about our data sources and methodologies.