Stanford was founded in 1885 by the former Governor of California and future U.S. Senator Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, as a memorial to their only son, Leland Stanford Jr. who died of typhoid in Europe a few weeks before his 16th birthday. The Stanfords used their farm lands to create the university, and hoped to establish a major research university in the West, the first of its kind. In addition, the university was established as a co-educational institution, enrolling both male and female students.
Stanford University enrolls about 6,700 undergraduates from all over the United States and the world, as well as about 8,000 graduate students. There are approximately over 160,000 living Stanford alumni, both undergraduate and graduate.[6] There are also 18 Nobel Prize laureates affiliated with Stanford. The University, because of its close location to Silicon Valley, offers strong programs in business management and engineering; many Stanford alumni have founded companies associated with technology, such as HP, Sun Microsystems and Google. It is also known as a highly selective school, with competitive admissions cycles. It is currently ranked 4th among national universities by U.S. News and World Report.