Today in history, on January 25 of the year 1825, the United State's first engineering school, Rensselaer Polytechnic, opened it's doors. This institute was hot grounds for some of the nation's smartest college graduates looking to even further their education in the sciences, such as graduates from Harvard, Yale and Princeton. In the first years of its lifetime, it was the most important center for technological research of all kinds. The school boasted many notable graduates in it's time, such as J Erik Jonsson, the co-founder of Texas Instruments (sound familiar? Check the name on your graphing calculator.) Another graduate worth mentioning is Curtis Priem, the very man who developed the first graphics card processor used in PCs, later going on to co-found the company NVIDIA, a name you can easily find associated with gaming platforms and PC graphics. Actually, you have Rensselaer Polytechnic to thank for so many of the things you've likely taken advantage of in your lifetime- Motorola, the website HowStuffWorks, LinkedIn, email, and even a Ferris Wheel! This institute has been crafting great minds since the beginning, and continues to even to this day, still boasting graduates like NASA astronauts and professional athletes.

Getting into this institute today isn't the easiest thing to do either. The average GPA of an admitted freshman is nearly a 3.9, paired with a minimum SAT score of around 1300- and that's just the school's 50th percentile. The average tuition rate for an undergrad student rings in at near 50 thousand dollars a year, with about 17 thousand dollars worth of fees on top of that. Oh, and buying a laptop is a requirement of all students, putting an undergrads final cost somewhere around 78 thousand dollars a year- which some may argue is a small price to pay for an education at an institute that's basically the founding father of technological research.

If you want to learn more about this very important institute and it's notable graduates, check out their "About" website!