Prospective freshmen will be welcomed to campus beginning Thursday during Stanford’s annual Admit Weekend. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

High school students admitted to the Class of 2019 – many accompanied by family members – will arrive on campus Thursday for Admit Weekend 2015, a three-day introduction to the people, programs and places that define Stanford.

As of last week, 1,324 prospective freshmen – affectionately known as “ProFros” at Stanford – had registered for the event, along with 1,276 parents and guardians, and 218 siblings.

Harry J. Elam Jr., vice provost for undergraduate education, and Richard H. Shaw, dean of admission and financial aid, will welcome the visitors on Thursday. During the afternoon event, the audience also will hear from undergraduates eager to share some of the highlights of their intellectual journeys at Stanford, including small seminars, university-funded research projects, honors work and overseas studies.

President John Hennessy will take the stage on Friday morning to field questions from students and family members during his always-popular Q&A.

Admit Weekend ends Saturday with a “What Matters to Me and Why” presentation by Stanford alumna Maribel Ledezma-Williams, who is a vice president in the Office of Global Leadership and Diversity at Goldman Sachs. At Stanford, she served on the curriculum design committee to create the Undergraduate Program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. She held work-study jobs in El Centro Chicano, the Women’s Community Center, and the School of Engineering’s development office.

The university has offered admission to 2,144 students for the Class of 2019. Admitted students have until May 1 to accept Stanford’s offer.

Admit Weekend is designed to encourage prospective freshmen to begin to explore Stanford’s academic, residential, athletic and social scenes by offering them a wide variety of activities and programs that showcase the university’s breadth and depth.

There will be individual sessions on a variety of topics, including sessions in which current students will talk about their experiences as first-generation college students, about studying abroad through the Bing Overseas Studies Program, and about living, working and studying in the nation’s capital through Stanford in Washington.

The weekend will feature a symposium of undergraduate research and public service, hosted by the Office of Undergraduate Advising and Research. Current students also will talk about their research projects at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute. In addition, students will talk about the rich variety of religious opportunities available on campus.

Many of the students will share a dorm room with a current student so they can experience residential life at Stanford.

Panels of faculty and students will discuss diversity programs in engineering, introductory seminars taught by faculty experts in their fields, and academic programs based in residence halls: Immersion in the Arts: Living in Culture and Structured Liberal Education.

The Women’s Community Center is hosting a student panel of women who will talk about opportunities in science and engineering at Stanford.

Open houses will be held all over campus – at student community centers and residence halls, and at program offices, including the Haas Center for Public Service, the Office of Accessible Education and the Humanities Center.

The prospective students and their families can get a taste of life in the classroom by attending seminars taught by faculty members, including:

• Ambition: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, 1819
• The Science missing from The Imitation Game
• Engineering: The Liberal Arts of the 21^st Century
• Maintaining Humanity’s Life Support System in the 21^st Century
• Lights, Nano, Action: New Optical Materials and Methods to Visualize Nanoscale Phenomena

Bing Concert Hall and Cantor Arts Center are hosting tours. So are Stanford Stadium and Green Library. The visitors have been invited on walking tours of campus and of the Science and Engineering Quad, as well as “the Dish.”

Admit Weekend includes events designed specifically for parents, including dorm tours, an alcohol education panel and parent breakfast.

The Parents’ Club of Stanford University is hosting a mixer. Stanford administrators and parents of current Stanford students are hosting a “coffee table talk” on how students can make the most of their Stanford experience and how parents can stay connected to Stanford throughout the coming academic year