With Stanford’s 134th Commencement Ceremony coming up, we took a look at degree conferral data to understand what the Class of ’25 looks like and who might be coming back for a coterminal degree.
A Stanford graduation
Stanford is nothing if not loyal to its traditions. The University boasts a vibrant undergraduate presence that, over the years, has developed a rather unique way of celebrating its seniors’ departures. In the weeks before commencement, seniors will take graduation pictures at iconic places across campus ranging from MemChu to McMurtry. The pregame activities (which do, in fact, include drinking copious amounts of alcohol) will conclude with Senior Dinner on the Quad, ​​where seniors celebrate their time at Stanford before families arrive for Commencement Weekend. During Commencement, the seniors will enter in style, clad in wacky costumes.
This year, the commencement will feature a few opening remarks by University president Jonathan Levin ’94 before transitioning to speaker Katie Ledecky. Ledecky, tops the list of decorated Stanford Olympians with an astonishing nine Olympic gold medals.
Historically, the Commencement Address has been one of the most cherished components of the Commencement Ceremony. I, for one, distinctly remember being asked to analyze the rhetorical strategies used by Steve Jobs for an English literature class during my sophomore year of high school.
Of course, a commencement is about much more than its speaker — it’s a celebration of the students who spent countless hours grinding away, of the parents who made countless sacrifices to see their children graduate and the faculty who dedicated their time and expertise to nurture the minds of these students. A natural question, then, is what the graduating Class of ’25 looks like and how that mix has changed over the years.
Degree conferrals
Upon successfully completing all degree requirements and filing an application to graduate on Axess, Stanford students are officially recognized via the conferral process.
Collating the degree conferral data, there are some interesting trends worth exploring. For one, the raw counts stack up to over 1,800 bachelor’s degrees conferred each year (plus or minus 100) with the notable expectation of 2021 highlighted in black. This, of course, is no surprise and can probably be accounted for by COVID-19.
Looking past the raw counts, we find that the popularity of degree programs has shifted over time, with computer science slowly but surely gaining prominence among the graduating class. It is also worth pointing out that degree programs under the School of Engineering have generally seen an increase in popularity. This aligns with past Daily coverage indicating a general decrease in the number of history and English degrees in favor of mathematical and computational science, symbolic systems and computer science degrees. While some folks have qualms with racing bar charts, I feel obligated to include one here.