Georgia Tech

The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Established in 1885, it has the largest student enrollment of the University System of Georgia, with satellite campuses in Savannah, Georgia, and Metz, France.

The school was founded as the Georgia School of Technology as part of New South efforts to build an industrial economy in the Southern United States after the Civil War. Initially, it offered only a degree in mechanical engineering. By 1901, its curriculum had expanded to include electrical, civil, and chemical engineering. In 1948, the school changed its name to reflect its evolution from a trade school to a technical institute and research university. Georgia Tech is organized into seven colleges with about 30 departments and academic units. It emphasizes the academic fields of science and technology. Georgia Tech's $5.8 billion economic impact for fiscal year 2024 led all public institutions in the state.

Georgia Tech fields eight men's and seven women's sports teams; these compete in NCAA Division I athletics and have won five national championships. The university is a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

History

Establishment

The idea of a technology school in Georgia was introduced in 1865 during the Reconstruction period. Two former Confederate officers, Major John Fletcher Hanson (an industrialist) and Nathaniel Edwin Harris (a politician and eventually governor of Georgia), who had become prominent citizens in the town of Macon, Georgia, after the Civil War, believed that the South needed to improve its technology to compete with the North's industrialization. Many Southerners at this time agreed with this idea, known as the New South Creed. Because the American South of that era was mainly populated by agricultural workers and technical developments lagged, they proposed establishing a technology school.

In 1882, the Georgia State Legislature authorized a committee, led by Harris, to visit the Northeast to learn how technology schools worked. They were impressed by the polytechnic educational models developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science (now Worcester Polytechnic Institute). The committee recommended adapting the Worcester model, which stressed a combination of "theory and practice," the "practice" component including student employment and production of consumer items to generate revenue for the school.

On October 13, 1885, Georgia Governor Henry D. McDaniel signed the bill to create and fund the new school. In 1887, Atlanta pioneer Richard Peters donated to the state 4 acres (1.6 ha) of the site of a failed garden suburb called Peters Park. The site was bounded on the south by North Avenue and on the west by Cherry Street. He then sold five adjoining acres of land to the state for US$10,000, (equivalent to $360,000 in 2025). This land was near Atlanta's northern city limits at the time of its founding, although the city has since expanded beyond it. A historical marker on the large hill in Central Campus says that the site occupied by the school's first buildings once held fortifications to protect Atlanta during the Atlanta campaign of the American Civil War. The surrender of the city took place in 1864 on what today is the southwestern boundary of the Georgia Tech campus.

Early years

The Georgia School of Technology opened in the fall of 1888 with two buildings. One building (now Tech Tower, an administrative headquarters) had classrooms to teach students. The second building featured a shop and had a foundry, forge, boiler room, and engine room. It was designed for students to work and produce goods to sell and fund the school. The two buildings were equal in size to show the importance of teaching both the mind and the hands, though, at the time, there was some disagreement as to whether the machine shop should have been used to turn a profit.

Campus sections

The Georgia Tech campus is located in Midtown, an area slightly north of downtown Atlanta. The campus offers a mix of tall buildings and greenery. More than 15,000 trees cover nearly 30 percent of the campus. The university has been tree campus-certified since 2008 and a Certified ArbNet Level II Arboretum since 2016. The campus is served by two stations on the MARTA rail system, Midtown and North Avenue.

The campus is organized into four main parts: West Campus, East Campus, Central Campus, and Technology Square. West Campus and East Campus are both occupied primarily by residence halls, while Central Campus is reserved primarily for teaching and research buildings.

West Campus

West Campus is occupied primarily by apartments and coed undergraduate dormitories. Apartments include Crecine, Center Street, Sixth Street, Maulding, Graduate Living Center, Eighth Street, Nelson Shell, and Zbar, while dorms include Bud and Val Peterson, Freeman, Montag, Fitten, Folk, Caldwell, Armstrong, Hefner, Fulmer, and Woodruff suites. The Campus Recreation Center (formerly the Student Athletic Complex); a volleyball court; a large, low natural green area known as the Burger Bowl; and a flat artificial green area known as the Roe Stamps (formerly SAC) Fields are all located on the west side of the campus. In 2017, West Village, a multipurpose facility featuring dining options, meeting space, School of Music classrooms, and offices on West Campus, opened.

The Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking is located on West Campus. Also within walking distance of West Campus are several late-night eateries. West Campus was home to a convenience store, West Side Market, which closed following the opening of West Village in the fall of 2017. Because of limited space, all auto travel proceeds via a network of one-way streets that connects West Campus to Ferst Drive, the main road of the campus. Woodruff Dining Hall, or "Woody's," was the West Campus dining hall before closing after the opening of West Village. It connected the Woodruff North and Woodruff South undergraduate dorms.

East Campus

East Campus houses all of the fraternities and sororities as well as most of the undergraduate first-year dormitories. East Campus abuts the Downtown Connector, granting residents quick access to Midtown and its businesses (for example, The Varsity) via a number of bridges over the highway. Georgia Tech football's home, Bobby Dodd Stadium, is located on East Campus, as is Georgia Tech basketball's home, McCamish Pavilion (formerly Alexander Memorial Coliseum).

Organization and administration

Georgia Tech's undergraduate and graduate programs are divided into seven colleges. Georgia Tech has sought to expand its undergraduate and graduate offerings in less technical fields, primarily those under the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, which saw a 20% increase in admissions in 2008. Also, even in the Ivan Allen College, the Institute does not offer Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees, only Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees. Georgia Tech's honors program is highly selective and designed to cater to the most intellectually curious undergraduates from all seven colleges.

Funding

The Georgia Institute of Technology is a public institution that receives funds from the State of Georgia, tuition, fees, research grants, and alumni contributions. In 2025, the Institute reported a total revenue amounting to about $2.997 billion, of which 77% came from the Institute's own operations and 18.6% from state appropriations. Reported expenditures amounted to about $2.89 billion, of which 51% was spent on research and 15.8% on instruction. Total assets were reported to amount to about $3.644 billion. The Georgia Tech Foundation runs the university's endowment and was incorporated in 1932. It includes several wholly owned subsidiaries that own land on campus or in Midtown and lease the land back to the Georgia Board of Regents and other companies and organizations. As of 2007, Georgia Tech had the most generous alumni donor base, percentage wise, of any public university ranked in the top 50. In 2015, the university received a $30 million grant from Atlanta philanthropist Diana Blank to build the "most environmentally-sound building ever constructed in the Southeast." In 2025, Georgia Tech received the single largest donation in its history. Alumnus John W. Durstine bequeathed the university’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering $100 million, which is being used to expand facilities, programs, and research and fund faculty endowments.

Academics

Undergraduate admissions

The 2022 annual ranking of U.S. News & World Report categorizes Georgia Institute of Technology as "most selective." For the Class of 2029 (enrolled fall 2025), Georgia Tech received 66,895 applications from first-time, first-year students and accepted 8,640 (12.74%). In the 2028 cycle, of those accepted, nearly 4,000 enrolled, a yield rate (the percentage of accepted students who choose to attend the university) of 45.8%. Of the 77% of the incoming first-year class who submitted SAT scores, the middle 50% composite scores were 1440. Of the 35% of enrolled first-year students in 2023 who submitted ACT scores, the middle 50% composite score was between 31 and 35 Georgia Tech's freshman retention rate is 98%, with 92% going on to graduate within six years. In the 2020–2021 academic year, 95 first-year students were National Merit Scholars which was the highest in Georgia.

In 2017, Georgia Tech announced valedictorians and salutatorians from Georgia's accredited public and private high schools with 50 or more graduates will be the only students offered automatic undergraduate admission via its Georgia Tech Scholars Program.

Rankings

In 2021, U.S. News & World Report named Georgia Tech third worldwide for both its Bachelor's in Analytics and Master of Science in Business Analytics degree programs. Also in the 2021 Times Higher Education subject rankings, Georgia Tech ranked 12th for engineering and 13th for computer science in the world.

Georgia Tech's undergraduate engineering program was ranked third in the United States, and its graduate engineering program ranked fourth by U.S. News & World Report for 2025. Georgia Tech's graduate engineering program rankings are aerospace (2nd), biomedical (tied 1st), chemical (2nd), civil (2nd), computer (6th), electrical (3rd), environmental (1st), industrial (1st), materials (3rd), and mechanical (tied 4th). Georgia Tech's undergraduate computer science program tied for fifth.

Also for 2025, U.S. News & World Report ranked Georgia Tech third in the United States for most innovative university.

Research

Facilities and classification

Georgia Tech is classified among "Research 1: Very High Research Spending and Doctorate Production" universities. The National Science Foundation ranked Georgia Tech 15th among American universities for research and development expenditures in 2024 with $1.53 billion. Much of this research is funded by large corporations or governmental organizations. Research is organizationally under the Executive Vice President for Research, Tim Lieuwen, who reports directly to Georgia Tech's president. Eleven interdisciplinary research institutes report to him, with all research centers, laboratories and interdisciplinary research activities at Georgia Tech reporting through one of those institutes.

The oldest of those research institutes is a nonprofit research organization referred to as the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). GTRI provides sponsored research in a variety of technical specialties including radar, electro-optics, and materials engineering. More than 93% of its research is for federal sponsors, especially government-funded classified work. GTRI employs around 3,000 people and had $988 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025. The other institutes include: the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, the Institute for Data Engineering and Science; the Strategic Energy Institute; the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute; the Institute for Matter and Systems; the Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society; the Institute for People and Technology; the Renewable Bioproducts Institute; the Institute for Robotics and Intelligence Machines; the Space Research Institute; and the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems.

Entrepreneurship

Many startup companies are produced through research conducted at Georgia Tech, with the Advanced Technology Development Center and VentureLab ready to assist Georgia Tech's researchers and entrepreneurs in organization and commercialization. The Georgia Tech Research Corporation serves as Georgia Tech's contract and technology licensing agency. Georgia Tech is ranked fourth for startup companies, eighth in patents, and eleventh in technology transfer by the Milken Institute. Georgia Tech and GTRI devote 1,900,000 square feet (180,000 m2) of space to research purposes, including the new $90 million Marcus Nanotechnology Building, one of the largest nanotechnology research facilities in the Southeastern United States with over 30,000 square feet (2,800 m2) of clean room space.

Georgia Tech encourages undergraduates to participate in research alongside graduate students and faculty. The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program awards scholarships each semester to undergraduates who pursue research activities. These scholarships, called the President's Undergraduate Research Awards, take the form of student salaries or help cover travel expenses when students present their work at professional meetings. Additionally, undergraduates may participate in research and write a thesis to earn a "Research Option" credit on their transcripts. An undergraduate research journal, The Tower, was established in 2007 to provide undergraduates with a venue for disseminating their research and a chance to become familiar with the academic publishing process.

Student life

Georgia Tech students benefit from many Institute-sponsored or related events on campus, as well as a wide selection of cultural options in the surrounding district of Midtown Atlanta, "Atlanta's Heart of the Arts". Home Park, a neighborhood that borders the north end of campus, is a popular living area for Georgia Tech students and recent graduates.

Student demographics

As of fall 2025, the student body consists of more than 56,000 undergraduate and graduate students, with graduate students making up 60% of the student body. The student body at Georgia Tech is approximately 68% male and 32% female.

Around 50% of all Georgia Tech students are residents of the state of Georgia, around 20% come from outside the U.S., and 25–30% are residents of other U.S. states or territories. The top states of origin for all non-Georgia U.S. students are Florida, Texas, California, North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, and Maryland. Students at Georgia Tech represent all 50 states and 114 countries. The top three countries of origin for all international students are China, India, and South Korea.

Housing

Georgia Tech Housing is subject to a clear geographic division of campus into eastern and western areas that contain the vast majority of housing. East Campus is largely populated by first-year students and is served by North Avenue Dining Hall. West Campus houses some first-year, transfer, and returning students (upperclassmen), and is served by West Village Dining Commons. Graduate students typically live off-campus (for example, in Home Park) or on-campus in the Graduate Living Center or Tenth and Home.

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