Photo: Joe Ravi (CC BY-SA 3.0)
School data & stats
Outcomes
Cost
Community
Overview
Illinois Institute of Technology is a private technological university on Chicago's South Side, built around engineering, computing, and design rather than a broad liberal arts identity. Its campus is a genuine modernist landmark — much of it designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe during his years as head of the architecture school — giving IIT an architectural pedigree few technical universities can claim. The school is small by research-university standards, which lets it maintain close faculty contact even in technical fields, and its South Side, Bronzeville-adjacent location puts it a short train ride from the Loop's engineering, finance, and design employers.
Academics
Engineering, computer science, and architecture are the core strengths, with the architecture program tracing directly back to Mies's Bauhaus-influenced curriculum. IIT's signature academic requirement is its Interprofessional Projects program, which puts students from different majors on the same team to solve a real, often externally sponsored problem — a structured version of the hands-on, applied ethos that runs through the whole curriculum. Class sizes stay small even in popular majors, and research opportunities are accessible to undergraduates earlier than at larger technical universities, partly because the school's small size means fewer students competing for lab spots.
Campus & student life
The Mies-designed core of campus, including S.R. Crown Hall, is studied by architecture students worldwide, and the aesthetic sets a spare, functionalist tone across the rest of campus. IIT is not a big-athletics school, and social life is shaped more by co-op schedules, project deadlines, and a technically minded, often international student body than by a traditional college-town scene. The South Side location means students engage with a real Chicago neighborhood rather than an insulated campus bubble.
Getting in
Admission is holistic but STEM fluency is what the university is really evaluating — strong math and science preparation matters more than a conventional liberal-arts application narrative. IIT has a long history of merit scholarship generosity aimed at strong STEM students who might otherwise choose a bigger-name engineering school, and it markets itself partly on value relative to peer technical universities.
After graduation
IIT's Chicago location translates directly into internship and co-op pipelines with the city's engineering, architecture, and finance employers, and many students stay in the Chicago area after graduation. The architecture program in particular feeds directly into well-known Chicago firms carrying on the city's design lineage. Engineering alumni networks run deep in the Midwest industrial and construction sectors.
Admissions
Deadlines (2026–27 cycle)
Applying
iit.edu ↗High school coursework
Recommended4 years of English · 4 years of mathematics for STEM programs (pre-calculus or above highly recommended; 3-4 years for other programs) · 4 years of science for STEM programs (physics highly recommended; 3 years for other programs) · 3 years of social science
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