Franklin W Olin College of Engineering

Private · Selective · MA

Photo: Michael Maloney (CC BY-SA 3.0)

School data & stats

TypePrivate

LocationMA · Northeast

SettingSuburban

Undergrads377

Student:faculty9:1

Outcomes

4-yr grad rate63.9%

6-yr grad rate96.4%

Drop-out rate2%

Study abroad—

Cost

In-state tuition$66k

Out-of-state tuition$66k

Application fee—

Community

Racial diversity58.4%

Gender diversity47.2%

International7.4%

Identity—

Overview

Olin College of Engineering, in Needham, Massachusetts, is a young, small, intensely selective engineering school founded explicitly to rethink how engineering is taught. Rather than following the traditional lecture-and-textbook model, Olin was built from scratch in the early 2000s around hands-on, project-based learning and a curriculum substantially co-designed with its earliest cohorts of students, and it remains one of the most distinctive engineering educations in the country because of that founding premise.

Academics

The curriculum is almost entirely project-based: students design and build real things starting in their first semester rather than working through years of theory before ever touching a project, and Olin awards a general engineering degree with a chosen concentration rather than sorting students into rigid departmental majors from day one. A senior-year capstone pairs student teams with sponsoring companies on real engineering problems, functioning much like an industry-funded design project. Class sizes are necessarily small given Olin's tiny enrollment, and the close, formal partnership with neighboring Babson College and Wellesley College lets Olin students take business and liberal arts coursework they wouldn't otherwise have access to at a purely technical school.

Campus & student life

Olin enrolls only a few hundred students total, giving it an unusually tight-knit, almost startup-like community feel where students and faculty know each other well and the line between the two can feel thinner than at a typical engineering school. Its cross-registration partnership with Babson and Wellesley extends the social and academic world well beyond Olin's own small campus, giving students access to entrepreneurship culture at Babson and a much larger liberal arts community at Wellesley that a school Olin's size couldn't otherwise offer on its own.

Getting in

Olin's admissions process looks specifically for students who thrive in an open-ended, build-it-yourself engineering environment rather than a traditional lecture-based one, so evidence of hands-on making, tinkering, robotics, or independent project work carries real weight beyond grades and test scores. Candidate weekends, where admitted-track applicants visit campus and work through design challenges together, are a distinctive part of how Olin evaluates fit, and the school is intensely selective for its size, admitting a very small class each year.

After graduation

Olin graduates are known for being unusually well-prepared for real-world engineering work and startups given the project-based training, with many going directly into engineering roles at technology and hardware companies or founding their own ventures rather than following a more traditional corporate-training-program path. Graduate school placement in engineering PhD programs is also strong for those who pursue it, and the small, close alumni network reflects the same tight community feel as the student body and stays unusually engaged with the college.

Worth knowing

Every admitted student receives a substantial merit scholarship, a distinctive and well-known feature of Olin's model that reflects the founding Olin Foundation's original goal of making an elite engineering education viable regardless of family finances. Prospective students should understand the curriculum's project-first philosophy is a genuine departure from a conventional engineering degree, not a marketing description, and that Olin's tiny size means the college doesn't offer the breadth of majors, clubs, or campus life a larger university would.

olin.edu ↗

Admissions

Acceptance rate25.2%

Enrolled mid-50%SAT 1493–1558

Test policyoptional

Rec letters3

Deadlines (2026–27 cycle)

Regular decisionDec 15

Verified from the school’s admissions page ↗

Applying (2026-27 cycle)

Apply through Common App.

Financial aid formsJan 15

Olin has no early action or early decision option -- everyone applies by the same December 15 deadline, and applicants who advance are then required to attend a Candidates' Weekend before final decisions go out in late March.

Interviews: Evaluative interviews happen only as part of the required in-person Candidates' Weekend for applicants who advance past the initial application review (virtual for students outside the contiguous U.S.), not as a separate standalone step. Separately, Olin's FAQ lists an alumni interview as one optional way to show demonstrated interest before that stage, alongside a campus visit or virtual programming.

Verified from the school’s admissions pages ↗