Computer science courses continue to surge in popularity, making up 11 of the top 20 most enrolled courses this quarter, according to Stanford University’s ExploreCourses platform, up from last quarter’s nine.
Sitting as the most enrolled course with 1254 students is COLLEGE 102: “Citizenship in the 21st Century.” Approximately two-thirds of the frosh class takes this course, which fulfills part of the first-year Civic, Liberal, and Global Education requirement. In this frosh course, students debate what it means to be a citizen of a community, including the associated rights and responsibilities of citizenship, according to the COLLEGE website.
Although its enrollment dropped by more than 20% from last winter, the former second place course CS 224N: “Natural Language Processing with Deep Learning” (cross-listed as LINGUIST 284 and SYMSYS 195N) now sits in the third place slot with 511 students, making it one of the school’s most popular computer science and STEM courses.
In sixth place, with 410 enrolled students, sits another CS course, 205L: “Continuous Mathematical Methods with an Emphasis on Machine Learning” which centers around machine and deep learning.
The last new non-fall CS course in the top 10 is CS 124: “From Languages to Information” (cross-listed as LINGUIST 180, LINGUIST 280), with 359 enrollments at seventh place, which, along with CS 224N, indicates the popularity of courses that couple computer programming principles with linguistic studies.
Ranking 16th in the 2024 fall quarter, MATH 51: “Linear Algebra, Multivariable Calculus, and Modern Applications” leaps to fourth place with 472 enrollments as the natural continuation of MATH 21 and the calculus 20-series. As a prerequisite for nearly all STEM fields – from biology to chemical engineering – this course provides an introduction to a unified coverage of linear algebra topics and multivariable differential calculus topics.
EMED 127: “Health Care Leadership” (cross listed as EMED 227, PUBLPOL 127, PUBLPOL 227) ranks eighth with 348 enrollments. This course brings in healthcare experts, such as CEOs of healthcare technology and pharmaceutical companies or leaders in public health, to “discuss their personal core values, share lessons learned and their recipe for effective leadership in the healthcare field.” according to ExploreCourses.
Similar to the 2023 winter quarter, the most enrolled non-STEM course (other than COLLEGE 102) is a political economics course within the Graduate School of Business. POLECON 230: “Strategy Beyond Markets” rounds out the top 10 with 317 enrollments, as a course offered only to GSB students focused “on the firm’s strategic interactions with nonmarket players, like politicians, interest groups, activists, regulators, and bureaucrats.”
Other notable non-computer science or math courses within the top 20 include BIO 82: “Genetics,” a popular class for biology majors and OIT 274: “Data and Decisions – Base (Flipped Classroom)” — a first-year MBA course in statistics and regression analysis within the Graduate School of Business. Maintaining a similar rank to last quarter is PSYCH 1: “Introduction to Psychology,” a popular undergraduate class for psychology majors and non-majors alike..
Lastly, the above graph showcases how the top 10 most popular courses from the winter 2023 and 2024 quarters have seen their enrollments change between the two years. Noticeably, a significant increase is seen in the enrollments for CS 106A and CS 106B, representing a rise in popularity of introductory computer science courses.
The following charts separate the most enrolled courses into graduate courses and courses from the GSB, Stanford Medical School and Stanford Law School. However, please note there is often significant enrollment crossover between undergraduate and graduate courses.