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Friday, October 23, 2026

THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY CLASS OF 1962

This will be the first of a 3-part series on Stanford University.

  • Part 1:  the title above.  We have a facebook page.
  • Part 2:  The Stanford Prison Experiment and Marshmallow Study.
  • Part 3:  Elizabeth Holmes, maybe the most infamous Stanford student.  Currently playing in movie theaters is a documentary about her, You Can See Everything.  Rotten Tomatoes scores of 98/97!!!  I might just go and see it today, which would be the first time for me to actually go to a theater since Barbenheimer weekend.

Why Stanford class of 1962?  That was the year I graduated, after 3.75 years there.  I have had numerous postings about Stanford University.  Here are a few.

I asked Google AI, who are the most famous Stanford University graduates.  Too many to list here, but here are some:  Ted Danson (actor), Sigourney Weaver (actor), Sally Ride (astronaut), Tiger Woods (golfer), Katie Ledecky (swimming), John McEnroe (tennis), Bob Mathias (track and field), Sergey Brin/Larry Page (Google), Phil Knight (Nike), Jensen Huang (NVIDIA), Robert Mondavi (wines), Charles Schwab (finance), Herbert Hoover (POTUS), Sandra Day O'Conner (Supreme Court), Rachel Maddow (broadcaster),  Eunice Kennedy Schriver (special olympics), John Steinbeck (author)  and a bunch of Nobel Prize Winners.

 

I graduated from Stanford University in 1962.  Wow, that was 64 years ago.  I asked Google AI, who were the most famous class of 1962 graduates.  Only two people were mentioned:  Ted Koppel and Phil Knight.  Yes, they are pretty famous, but they each got a masters' degree.  There were no really famous undergraduate students in our class of 1962.  No one, apparently, became a billionaire or U.S. Senator or great golfer or anything.


What spurred me to write this particular posting is an article I read in the recent Fall edition of the alumni magazine.


NERD NATION is a quarter-million strong.

  • That’s right. For the first time in history,

    there are more than 250,000 living Stanford

    alumni. There were, in fact, 251,748 in July.

    Our number inevitably dwindles a bit before

    growing at the end of each quarter, but that’s

    the count we’ve used to paint a portrait of the

    alumni body.

  • Steve Miller (right) became the 250,000th LIVING alum.  Somebody actually keeps track of these people.
  • I found it particularly interesting that the international city where most Stanford graduates lives is Singapore, with 1,251, or 201 alum per million population.
    • #2 Tokyo 1082  (29 a/mp) and #3 London 1067 (117 a/mp).
    • While 50.2% of those who have read this blog comes from the U.S., an astounding 14.6% come from #2 Singapore, and #3 is the United Kingdom.
      • Singapore:  2.35%/million population
      • USA: 0.14%/million population.
      • UK: 0.06%/million population.
  • Some other bits of info.
    • 1 in 9,234 became an astronaut.  Sally Ride earned four degrees from Stanford:  BS, BA, MS and PhD), and was the first American woman in space.
    • 1 in 19,365 won a Nobel prize.
    • 1 in 252,748 became president of the U.S.
  • Most popular majors.  Top three.
    • 1891-1945:  economics, history and english.
    • 1946-1980:  history, economics and political.
    • 1981-2000:  economics, biological sciences, and human biology
    • 2001-2026:  computer science, human biology and economics.
  • Stanford was coeducational when it opened in 1891, although with a cap of 500 females.
    • This cap was increased to 40% in 1933, and eliminated in 1973.  Today, 52% are female.
    • Harvard was founded in 1636, and only admitted men until their merger with Radcliffe in 1977.  Today, no Radcliffe College, and Harvard has 53% female.

Stanford was terrible in athletics when I was there.  Today, doing fine.

  • The first university to win the Director's Cup for top NCAA team in all athletic events was North Carolina in 1993-4, with Stanford #2.
  • For the next 25 straight years, Stanford was #1.
  • Texas broke that streak in 2020-21, and repeated in 2022.  The COVID pandemic changed university priorities.
  • But Stanford regained the Cup in 2023.
  • Texas prevailed in 2024 and 2025.  Stanford was #2 in 2025/26.

Here is what Stanford students look like on graduation day.  

The Stanford Tree (which has never been blessed by the university as official) is featured.

About this controversy, Stanford once had mascot, an Indian, for in my days there, sport teams were called the Stanford Indians.  However, like the Cleveland  and Washington pro teams, change came.  Early for Stanford, in 1972, as the mascot, said to be Prince Lightfoot of the Yorok tribe, was abolished by the Associated Students of Stanford University.   In 1975, the student body picked Robber Barons as a replacement, in honor of founder, railroad tycoon Leland Stanford.  The school Board did not particularly like that either, for the allusion was all too clear.  Says Google AI:

Leland Stanford perfectly embodied the 19th-century "robber baron" archetype. As a railroad tycoon, governor, and senator, he built a massive fortune through aggressive monopolies, political manipulation, and taxpayer exploitation. Yet, his legacy is deeply paradoxical, culminating in the founding of Stanford University. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The Stanford Tree is a sequoia, and redesigned each year, with a new student inside.  Currently, Sonnet Loki Van Doren.
She comes from a high school class of six.  Here is Van Doren as the current Stanford Tree.

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