Stanford University is located 40 miles south of San Francisco, at the midpoint of "The Peninsula" in the heart of Silicon Valley. The University was founded in 1885 and opened in 1891 on 8,000 acres situated among oak-studded foothills and meadows. Approximately 2300 acres form the main campus.

Stanford's original core and continuing focal point is the Inner Quad, which consists of California mission style buildings constructed of local sandstone and distinctive red tile roofs. Stanford Memorial Church and its surrounding buildings are a Bay Area landmark, and form the heart of a campus that consists of a series of interconnecting quads (originally planned by Frederick Law Olmstead, and being revitalized in current construction projects).

Stanford has over 14,000 students (divided evenly between graduate and undergraduates) from 100 countries, and 1,400 faculty members. The campus contains two large hospitals, Stanford Health Services and Packard Children's Hospital. The nearby Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is a two-mile long research facility in elementary particle physics that attracts scientists from throughout the world. There are approximately 2,000 research labs on the Stanford campus. Other campus attractions include the Hoover Tower, White Memorial Plaza, the Cantor Center for the Visual Arts, Hanna House (by Frank Lloyd Wright), and the adjacent Stanford Research Park and Stanford Shopping Center.