Massachusetts Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as MIT, is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT was founded in 1861 and is currently located on 168 acres, which reach more than a mile along the Cambridge side of the Charles River Basin. As of 2010, MIT had 1,017 faculty members, 4,299 undergraduate students and 6,267 graduate students. The undergraduate engineering program at MIT has held the top spot in U.S. News and World Report for over 20 years.
Stanford University is a private university located in Stanford, California. Stanford was founded in 1876, and as of fall 2010, it is home to 6,260 undergraduate students and 4,762 graduate students who live on campus. Total faculty at Stanford is 1,903, as of 2010, with 55 percent being tenured. In the 2009-2010 academic year, several Stanford engineering faculty members earned awards for their research and teaching, which included the Alexander Graham Bell Medal and the Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics.
University of California Berkeley is a public university located in Berkeley, California, on a 1,232-acre campus. UC Berkeley was founded in 1868, following the famous California gold rush. As of fall 2010, UC Berkeley has a total of 25,540 undergraduate students and 10,298 graduate students. Several of UC Berkeley's engineering programs ranked in the top ten nationally, as published by the National Resource Council in 2010.
Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, is a public university located in Atlanta, Georgia. Georgia Tech was founded in 1885 and opened in 1888 to 84 students. Today, Georgia Tech averages over 20,000 undergraduate and graduate students, with over 900 full-time faculty instructors. Georgia Tech ranked at the top in 2010 for awarding engineering degrees to all minority students, as reported by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.