<p>I tried to search, but I couldn't find anything specific. When do new freshman find out about their housing? Is it like finding out about your roommates in that you don't find out until you land on campus at NSO? I just mean, when do you know which dormitory you're in and whether you're in a double/triple, etc.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>They find out about which dorm they’re in in August.
During NSO, freshman figure out their room and roommate within their dorm.</p>
<p>After you have accepted, you receive a packet which asks a few basic questions about your preference in housing such as whether you want to live in all all-freshman dorm, a dorm with just freshman and sophomores, or a dorm with all 4 years. They use this information to select the dorm, and during the summer you learn about your assigned dorm (not room within the dorm), as mentioned in the post above. Most of the freshman rooms are quite basic and doubles. Roommates are assigned in a thoughtful way based on who they think you’ll get along, rather that just random selection.</p>
<p>I arrived by plane during my trip as an incoming freshman. There were students waiting at the airport to greet myself and other incoming freshman, who assisted with everything from answering questions to carrying luggage. There was also transport to the assigned dorms, which was helpful since I wasn’t familiar with the campus.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses!</p>
<p>Does anyone know how much of the campus size is actually… campus? Like including all the grad schools, medical buildings, even dorms, but just all of the main campus that students would be in, not including parts like the biological preserve, the undeveloped land, etc. How much of the 8200 acres are actually used and accessed by your average student? How big is the main campus?</p>
<p>It is a single campus.</p>
<p>@rorian - check out google maps. You can get a good sense from that.</p>
<p>How does it compare to the size of main campuses such as those in the Ivy League?</p>
<p>Wikipedia says, “It is often claimed that Stanford has the largest contiguous campus in the world…” Stanford’s campus is 8 to 60x the size of the Ivy League schools’ main campuses.</p>
<p>
The undergrad dorms and undergrad classrooms are contained within a ~2 square mile area (~1/6 of total area).</p>
<p>One of the main differences between Stanford’s campus and the campuses of many Ivy League schools is that everything is in one place. Harvard and Yale are, for instance, scattered all over their respective cities, and their students have to cross major streets (i.e., Mass Ave) when going to and from class. While Harvard has the Yard and Yale has Old Campus, these schools lack the “feel” of a single, cohesive campus. This gives them a much more urban (and somewhat less secure) feel.</p>
<p>In contrast, Stanford has everything in one place, complete with undergraduate/graduate housing, academic buildings, recreational/athletic facilities, hiking space, nature preserves, restaurants, plenty of open space, and a shopping mall. It’s actually its own city (Stanford, CA) and feels more like a resort than a school. Before people called it a “tech incubator with a football team,” they called it a “country club with classes.” Some people actually never leave campus for the entire year.</p>
<p>[The</a> Stanford Lands: Stanford University Facts](<a href=“http://facts.stanford.edu/about/lands]The”>Stanford Lands - Facts)</p>
<p>60% of Stanford’s 8,200 acres is undeveloped. If you look at a map of the campus, you’ll notice that there are several distinct “districts” that, when taken together, make Stanford seem “spread-out” (when in reality development on central campus is relatively dense). Pretty much everything outside of the Campus Drive loop is not a frequent destination for most undergrads (hospital/clinics, arboretum, athletics venues, Escondido Village, faculty housing, golf course, Jasper Ridge, SLAC, Stanford Research Park). Those areas, together a few thousand acres, act as a buffer to the center of campus, where undergrads spend most of their time. That area is about 300 acres (depending on what you include, e.g. Lake Lag), which is larger than its peers - but they also don’t have the academic breadth and depth that Stanford does, nor are their academic divisions consolidated onto one campus. The advanced development of its facilities is why Stanford has one of the highest measures of gross square feet per student (if not the highest). A lot is at your disposal.</p>
<p>You’ve received some great advice here, but just wanted to add. While you’ll receive your dorm assignment in August, you’ll find out your exact room on the first day of NSO. Don’t worry too much about getting a triple (or a quad), they are the exception rather than the rule (unless you’re in Roble, then you’re almost guaranteed a quad room). As a frosh, you’ll most likely be in a double. </p>
<p>It may sound silly, but I never realized how big and relatively rare the size of Stanford’s campus is until I visited several other colleges and Ivy League schools’ campuses over the past two years. I was utterly shocked at the size of some of the schools’ campuses and how they were so enmeshed with their surrounding cities/towns - Stanford is the exact opposite. Stanford is very much a self-contained campus, and yes, its very own city. Honestly, if you don’t want to, you never have to leave. The center of campus (i.e. the parts you’ll most use as a student) is about a 2 square mile area contained by the campus drive loop. There you have all the dorms, Tresidder/Old Union, the Quad, libraries, bookstore, some graduate and professional schools, etc. Once in that center, there are essentially no streets to cross or traffic to contend with (other than bikes, of course! ;)). Yes, there will be days when you want or need to venture out to the foothills, SLAC, the Med school, etc. but those are usually at your discretion. IMHO, Stanford has a beautiful campus that is truly unique among universities. Hope that helps!</p>
<p>^ to be clear, the 2-square-mile (~1,300-acre) area includes EV, arboretum, etc. The area within the Campus Drive loop is significantly smaller.</p>
<p>And a lot of the area within Campus Drive loop is either open space or buildings an undergrad would never visit.</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone who has responded so far. Its been really helpful. </p>
<p>So 8200 → smaller and smaller seems to be the trend with the posts’ consensus. So why exactly then is it so much more dominant/mandatory to have a bike here than, say an Ivy League or any other college? It’s been narrowed down to like 300 acres here, which even many of the ivy leagues are bigger than, let alone places like berkeley, etc</p>
<p>300 acres is a very low estimate. If you just include academic, recreation, and residential buildings that an undergrad would be most likely to visit, it’s 2-3x that area. I am not including various other areas that an undergrad my frequently go. For example, I regularly ran on the loop around the dish and biked to the mall, both of which would increase the area.</p>
<p>It’s possible to travel a mile between classes and dorms. In 3 of my 4 years on campus, I lived east of Campus Drive in Mirrielees and Escondido Village. At the time, the majority of my classes were approximately 1 mile away on the west side (Gates, Packard, …). Sure I could have walked the mile back and forth multiple times per day, but it would be a lot more pleasant to bike the distance.</p>
<p>^ it’s possible for a mile to separate a dorm and a class (I checked that using an online distance calculator before I posted), but no two classes are separated by a mile, as texaspg asked. I came up with the figure of 300 acres using an online area calculator, excluding Lake Lag, the empty area north of the Oval, etc. I also excluded everything outside the Campus Drive loop, because those are infrequent destinations (DAPER too). The overwhelming majority of students won’t live as far out as you did, precisely because of the distance. Most students rarely or never shop at the shopping center, because it’s expensive.</p>
<p>I’d add that few if any students will care about all the areas I included in my estimate, e.g. a student majoring in English will likely never have to venture to the chem/chemE area.</p>
<p>Phantasmagoric - How far is the med school from Hewlett?</p>
<p>^ they’re pretty close to each other, both in the northwest area of campus. Traveling between those two should be rare, given that Hewlett is mostly an undergrad teaching center and the med school is mostly grad.</p>
<p>Here’s a distance calculator if you want a more exact answer: <a href=“http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-distance-calculator.htm[/url]”>http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-distance-calculator.htm</a></p>
<p>BioE majors have classes in LKSC. I know several freshmen who were going between undergrad buildings and LKSC for consecutive lectures, and worse, from freshman dorms at Wilbur.</p>
<p>
That is a great area estimation tool. Thanks for that. Yes, the majority of undergrads live within campus loop, but hundreds of undergrads do not. It’s misleading to estimate area while ignoring housing for a group of this size. The draw cutoffs for Mirrielees are similar to the cutoffs for 2-room doubles closer to the central campus. There isn’t much correlation between draw cutoffs and distance, suggesting distance is not a major factor for a large portion of students. If I estimate area making a shape that goes east to include Mirrielees and Rains; south to include Cowell, Slavianskii Dom, and EBF; west to Sterling Quad and Campus Dr; and north to include the athletic facilities I get an area of ~800 acres. If I extend the range to all the areas of the campus that I regularly went to, which includes the trails around The Dish some other away from the central campus, then I get ~3000 acres.</p>