United States Cambridge, MA

Summary

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded in 1861, is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston. Around 11,000 students attend the university, with roughly 60 percent of them studying at the graduate level. MIT contains five schools: architecture and planning; engineering; humanities, arts, and social sciences; management; and science. English is the language of instruction at MIT. The academic calendar is a 4-1-4 system with a four-week "Independent Activities Period" in January. During this period, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff and alumni participate in forums, lecture series, recitals and other special activities. 

First-year undergraduate students are the only ones required to live on campus but many students further along in their studies choose to reside on campus as well. There are many opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students to gain research experience at one of MIT’s many labs or centers, including the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory, one of the largest university research reactors in the U.S. Nearly 90 percent of MIT undergraduates participate in the school’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, which partners students and faculty for research projects, by the time they graduate. More than $675 million was spent on research at MIT in a recent year, with additional federal funding going to MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, a Department of Defense research and development lab focused on technological solutions to national security issues.