About the School
Stanford University is a private research university in Stanford, California, in Silicon Valley. Because of its academic strength, wealth, and proximity to Silicon Valley, Stanford is often cited as one of the world's most prestigious universities.
The university is organized around three traditional schools consisting of 40 academic departments at the undergraduate and graduate level and four professional schools that focus on graduate programs in Law, Medicine, Education and Business. Stanford's undergraduate program is one of the top three most selective in the United States.
As of 2013 the university was organized into seven academic schools. The schools of Humanities and Sciences (27 departments), Engineering (9 departments), and Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (4 departments) have both graduate and undergraduate programs while the Schools of Law, Medicine, Education and Business have graduate programs only. The powers and authority of the faculty are vested in the Academic Council, which is made up of tenure and non-tenure line faculty, research faculty, senior fellows in some policy centers and institutes, the president of the university, and some other academic administrators, but most matters are handled by the Faculty Senate, made up of 55 elected representatives of the faculty.