Georgia Institute of Technology

In 1905 the far-sighted President Theodore Roosevelt visited Georgia Tech, founded 20 years earlier in Atlanta, to make a speech about the importance of technological education before shaking hands with every student. It would take him some time to do this now as the university has almost 19,000 students - with its ratio of twice as many males to females reflecting its engineering bias.

Its campus owes much of its present make-up to the fact that in 1996 it was the site of the athletes' village and a venue for a number of athletic events for that year's summer Olympics. Georgia Tech has a gold medal reputation for its programs in engineering, computing and the sciences which run alongside courses covering subjects such as architecture, liberal arts and management. Living by its motto 'Progress and Service' it has satellite campuses in Metz in France, Athlone in Ireland, Shanghai in China and Singapore.