Welcome to the Class of 2019 and transfer students!

Moving in
There will be plenty of volunteers around to help with moving in at Stanford during New Student Orientation.

Stanford is preparing to welcome 1,722 freshmen and 15 transfer students when New Student Orientation starts on Tuesday, Sept. 15.

New Student Orientation (NSO) is six days of programs designed to introduce new students to the rich academic, social and cultural life at Stanford.

NSO begins in the morning, when new students arrive at their residences with suitcases, boxes and bags and are greeted by volunteers who have memorized their names and faces. It ends Sunday evening, Sept. 20. Class instruction begins Monday, Sept. 21.

NSO programs for parents are limited to Tuesday and end with the evening dinner with Provost John Etchemendy. Because students will be busy with orientation, new parents are asked to say goodbye during late afternoon programs at the residence halls.

Visit this website for more on NSO parent events.

During the day, parents will have ample options to learn more about Stanford through, for instance, campus tours, open houses, a parent-to-parent panel discussion and a parent lounge and resource center located in Old Union Clubhouse.

Families will be able to temporarily park by residence halls to unload. Permanent parking is available at the Galvez parking lot, located at the corner of Campus Drive and Galvez Street.

Among Tuesday’s highlights will be the 125th Opening Convocation Ceremony beginning at 4 p.m. in the Inner Quad. President John Hennessy will officially welcome incoming students, their families and friends at the ceremony, which is the formal inauguration of the academic year.

The Class of 2019 hails from 49 states and 66 countries. California is home to 32.9 percent of freshmen. The next three top regions represented in the class are the South (18.1 percent); international students and U.S. students who completed high school abroad (12.2 percent); and the mid-Atlantic (10.5 percent). More than 95 percent ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school class. Almost 36 percent of the incoming freshmen say they are interested in engineering; nearly 23 percent have an academic interest in the natural sciences; 17.7 percent have expressed an interest in the humanities.

The Class of 2019 is composed of 50.5 percent men and 49.5 percent women. More than half graduated from public high schools (56.6 percent), followed by private schools (31.1 percent), international schools (11.9 percent) and home schools (less than 1 percent).

Among incoming freshmen, 15.2 percent are first-generation students – the first in their families to attend a four-year college.

The 15 transfer students joining the Stanford community include four veterans of military service. Eleven of the transfers hail from outside California.

Visit the New Student Orientation website.

See the Stanford Report article on the opening of the academic year.