The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university (Private university) located in Stanford (Stanford, California), California, United States. The university was founded in 1891 by the Californian railroad tycoon Leland Stanford and named for his recently deceased son. Its alumni have founded the companies Hewlett-Packard, Electronic Arts, Sun Microsystems, Nvidia, Yahoo!, Cisco Systems, Silicon Graphics, SunRun, and Google.

Stanford enrolls approximately 6,800 undergraduate and 8,300 graduate students from the United States and around the world. The university is divided into a number of schools, including the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford Law School, Stanford School of Medicine, and Stanford School of Engineering (Stanford University School of Engineering).

Stanford is ranked second among world universities by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, and its undergraduate program is currently ranked fourth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.

The universitys assets include a US$12.6 billion endowment, the third largest of any academic institution.

Stanfords athletic program has won the NACDA Directors Cup each of the past fifteen years. One of two private universities to compete in the Pacific-10 Conference, Stanford maintains its main athletic rivalry with Cal (University of California, Berkeley).