Stanford University (Leland Stanford Junior University) is located in Palo Alto, California, south of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is near the world famous high-tech park Silicon Valley and is a world famous private research University.Stanford University covers an area of about 33 square kilometers (8,180 acres), making it the sixth largest university in the United States.

Academically, Stanford University and the University of California Berkeley in San Francisco north Bay constitute the academic center of the Western United States.According to relevant statistics, as of March 2018, a total of 81 Stanford alumni, professors or researchers have won the Nobel Prize, ranking seventh in the world.27 have won the Turing Award (the highest prize in computer science), ranking first in the world.Seven other Stanford professors have won the Fields Medal, the highest prize in mathematics, ranking ninth in the world.In 2017-18, Stanford University ranked second in the World University Academic Rankings (ARWU) and QS World University Rankings, third in The Times Higher Education World University Rankings and third in the USNews World University Rankings.In 2017, times Higher Education ranked the world’s third most prestigious university.

Stanford laid a solid foundation for the rise of Silicon Valley and has produced leaders of many high-tech companies, including hewlett-packard, Google, yahoo, Nike, logitech, Snapchat, electronic arts, sun Microsystems, NVIDIA, cisco and LinkedIn.Stanford’s alumni include 30 wealthy entrepreneurs and 17 astronauts, making it one of the universities with the most members of congress.According to Forbes’ 2010 list of the universities with the most billionaires, Stanford university ranks second, with 28 billionaires, just behind Harvard