MIT as it is popularly known, Massachusetts Institute of Technology was founded in the year 1861 to meet the growing demands of industrial America. William Barton Rogers was the first elected president of the university. The university is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT is a private school consisting of 5 schools and 1 college, and 32 departments. The university is one of the two private universities with land-grant status. The university also has sea-grant and space-grant status. Over the decades MIT has given the world many inventions in the field of science and technology. The university is endowed with approximately $8.5 billion which is among the largest in the world.

The university boasts off a faculty of about 1,000 professors, assistant professor and associate professors. MIT’s alumni list contains an impressive 27 Nobel Prize winners. It has inspired many scientists, astronauts, entrepreneurs and politicians to be best in their fields. The list of notable alumni is endless, to list few they are: Former U.N General Secretary Kofi Annan, modern day entrepreneurs include John S. Reed (Chairman, Citigroup), Donald Douglas and James S. Mc. Donnell (McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company), Amar G. Bose of Bose Corporation, Mitch Kapor of Lotus Development Corporation, and Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet and founder of 3Com. About 35% of the United State’s manned space missions had MIT educated astronauts on board. The most notable among them was Buzz Aldrin.

The university has tremendous reputation all over the world for its excellent faculty, unmatched programs and state of the art research facilities. According to a recent survey, MIT was ranked number four overall in the World’s Top Two Hundred Universities. It is ranked number one in Engineering and Technology and number two in Science. It was also ranked number one in reputation in reputation in a study conducted by NRC in 1995. U.S News also ranked MIT as the number one engineering university in the country and also number one school for graduate study. The undergraduate program of MIT is ranked fourth in the country.

Number of undergraduate student enrollment is about 4,100 with approximately 57% male students and 43% female. Number of graduate students is about 6,200 with 70% male students and 30% female. Out of state students constitute whopping 91%. Students from over 100 countries study at MIT which speaks about the popularity of the university around the world. Of the minority students Asians/pacific islanders represent 28% of the students enrolled. The faculty constitutes about 1,327 male and 342 female.

If somebody wants to live on campus, the capacity of the on-campus residence hall is about 4,100 with availability of meals also. Types of residences include sorority houses, housing for married students, coed residence halls, women’s residence halls and fraternity houses. There are about 300 registered organizations on campus. The campus has no dearth of on-campus activities which include academic clubs, television station, theatre/drama, choir, concert band, newspaper, orchestra, religious activities, sports, minority cultural activities and what not.

The university has an excellent press which stands for communication between the outside media and the students, faculty, staff and the community of MIT. The university press does it through the means of Office website, MIT Tech Talk, MIT podcast, MIT E-News and News Media.

MIT’s website is not only the most popular among universities websites but also one of the world’s popular sites with the site constantly hitting top 1000 in traffic. The site has a very impressive design and interactive features. They also frequently change the layout of their homepage and colors to give a fresh look to the site every time an internet visitor browses the site. The most popular feature of the site is its world renowned open courseware program which is an absolutely free and open resource for students, faculty and people from all around the world. The homepage has easy links to education which contain information about their courses, OpenCourseWare, videos and podcasts. If you are looking for their research facilities and labs it can be found under ‘research’ link on the homepage. Then there is information on admissions and financial aid also, their offices and services, community groups, events and about MIT. It also provides a search bar to search the MIT using Google, people and offices.

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