Hey from Youniversity TV I'm Chloe.

And I'm Lavon [assumed spelling] at Stanford University, home of the Cardinals.

Let's kick off our tour. Stanford University is in Palo Alto in the heart of Silicon Valley between the cities of San Francisco and San Jose.

We have mini screens [assumed spelling] of cultural expos; we have tons [assumed spelling] at night.

There are a lot of places for you to go; hiking and stuff that are still on the Stanford campus.

But if we wanted to do something more San Francisco is 35 minutes away; San Jose is 35 minutes away. We're smack dab in the middle of all the action in the Bay Area.

One of the best places to see the Stanford campus is from the Hoover Tower observation deck. Red tiled roofs and sandstone arches stand in the high contrast against California blue skies and tall palm trees that line the pathways, courtyards and [inaudible].

Need some perspective? Take a moment to admire these beautiful bronzes [assumed spelling] by the famous sculptor Rodin [assumed spelling].

Each year approximately 6,700 undergraduate students enroll at Stanford. Close to 1700 are freshmen. Women and men are equally numbered and more than 50% are minorities.

We have a rich, cultural diversity here that is very tangible, that is a part of the texture of this place. About half of our students are students of color; a very large percentage are the first in their families to come to college.

Each year less than 10% of over 25,000 applicants are accepted at Stanford. The majority of admitted students score above 700 on all sections of the SAT or over 30 on the ACT.

Our admission process is much more holistic than people would expect. In terms of the quantifiables [assumed spelling] I would say virtually everyone that we're admitting pretty much has nothing but A's and B's on their transcript so we don't even calculate an average grade point average for the entering class.

The total cost of attendance at Stanford is just over $50,000 and Stanford's new financial aid initiatives can make a difference if you qualify.

Different programs that are related to financial aid--one is a program where if your family has income below $100,000 dollars a year and you have typical assets of a family that makes $100,000 a year, you're not expected to pay tuition. So your tuition at Stanford would be covered by Stanford University. If your family makes below $60,000 dollars a year and you're coming from a family that has typical assets, there isn't an expectation that your family pays anything. Your parents are not expected to pay your room, your board, your tuition and your fees. You are essentially provided with a full financial aid package.

Stanford University offers about 75 programs of study. Top faculty teaches 200 freshmen and sophomore seminars; and the quarter system allows students to take dozens of additional courses not possible under a more traditional semester curriculum.

The Drama Department at Stanford is that the performances are open to anyone; rather than just drama majors they're open to, auditions are open to everyone in terms of the university. I may direct a play and in the play will be someone from the Physics Department as well as someone from the Drama Department. And one time a student said he had to be late for rehearsal because he had to blow up some rockets.

Some popular student favorites are biology or human biology; economics; political science; psychology and English.

The Center for Comparative Studies in race and ethnicity is the first of its kind in the United States.

While Stanford's revolutionary Bio-X program bridges the sciences of medicine and engineering in search of new discoveries.

Faculty at Stanford are expected to be among the best teachers and researchers in their field. Since the university was founded 26 have won the Nobel Prize.

Every class you take the professors hold about 3 or 4 office hours a week where they're just hanging out in their office waiting for students to come to talk to them. They have treats and you can just go in there and ask them questions about the course or kind of have like greater chats about life or what you want to do after college; and they're just so eager to have you there. 75% of all our classes are only 15 students or less so we do have a lot of small class sizes. Most of them are small seminar style.

Several residences are considered theme houses with a cross cultural, academic blend or a focus theme.

My house is called story house and it's one of the academic theme houses. Different houses and dorms will have themes; so it's like academic themes, cultural themes. We also have a chef that cooks for us every day of the week Monday through Friday. She cooks lunch and dinner.

Stanford athletes have won more Olympic medals than all but a handful of countries. And the school has arguably one of the most successful Division I programs in the nation.

You know your passion? Get involved with the pre-veterinary archaeology or the environmentally sustainable business club.

Or take a different direction and chose from more than 600 organizations that drive the campus.

They say that coming to Stanford is like being offered a drink of water from a fire hose. There's just so much going on here. You don't know where to kind of dig in, jump in.

Stanford students and alumni have been credited for innovations ranging from GPS to recumbent and DNA.

Reese Witherspoon went to Stanford and Tiger Woods.

Well so did Astronauts Sally Ride.

And author Michael Cunningham.

HP, Google, You Tube and Yahoo, the innovative giant that created these companies are also considered to be responsible for the rise of Silicon Valley and they are all Stanford alumni.

So if you see yourself in an environment of intense creativity that helps you redefine who you can be and how you can help shape the world for your future, Stanford University might just be for you. It was fun at Stanford.

Thanks so much for joining us in beautiful Palo Alto, California. For Youniversity TV I'm Chloe.

And I'm Lavon. See you soon.

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