The NERDIEST Colleges

What is a nerd? A person that throws himself or herself into rigorous academics, stands in the corner at parties and tries to pick up potential mates with a pocket protector? We think not. Modern nerds fit into a more important category: people that pursue what they want with all their heart. They confidently participate in what they love, even if what they love is totally bizarre.

They're the future Nobel Laureates, astronauts and engineers, but also the champions of bygone eras, the lovers of mustaches, bike-jousting and campus-wide Rube Goldberg machines. From weird traditions (Seventh Annual Nitrogen Day?) to entertaining extracurricular activities (the Mustache Club?), these nerds do it all. Props to these schools for playing host to some of the most important, dynamic, driven young men and women of our generation!

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MIT

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This school has produced the most famous nerds on the planet: 31 astronauts, 76 Nobel laureates, Robert Metcalfe (the guy that co-invented the Ethernet), Kofi Annan, John M. Deutch (ex-Director of Central Intelligence), and William Reddington Hewitt (co-founder of Hewlett-Packard). But that doesn't even scratch the surface of the nerdy beast that is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2009 and 2010 MIT made a point of emailing its application decisions to prospective students on Pi Day. For "fun," MIT students partake in a Mystery Hunt, an annual competition in which students are invited to solve a large number of puzzles in order to find a coin hidden somewhere on campus. Even their pranks are seamless technological extravaganzas. At the Harvard-Yale football game in 1996, the Harvard logos on the scoreboard were hacked from VE-RI-TAS to read HU-GE-EGO instead. The typical MIT applicant is so overscheduled (on average they list 12 extracurricular activities) that, back in 2004, the MIT application was overhauled and a new question was instated: What do you do for fun? Dean of Admissions Marilee Jones said the change was prompted by an interaction with one MIT student in which, upon asking a group of students, "What do you daydream about?" one boy answered: "We don't daydream. There's no reward for it, so we don't do it."

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This school has produced the most famous nerds on the planet: 31 astronauts, 76 Nobel laureates, Robert Metcalfe (the guy that co-invented the Ethernet), Kofi Annan, John M. Deutch (ex-Director of Central Intelligence), and William Reddington Hewitt (co-founder of Hewlett-Packard). But that doesn't even scratch the surface of the nerdy beast that is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2009 and 2010 MIT made a point of emailing its application decisions to prospective students on Pi Day. For "fun," MIT students partake in a Mystery Hunt, an annual competition in which students are invited to solve a large number of puzzles in order to find a coin hidden somewhere on campus. Even their pranks are seamless technological extravaganzas. At the Harvard-Yale football game in 1996, the Harvard logos on the scoreboard were hacked from VE-RI-TAS to read HU-GE-EGO instead. The typical MIT applicant is so overscheduled (on average they list 12 extracurricular activities) that, back in 2004, the MIT application was overhauled and a new question was instated: What do you do for fun? Dean of Admissions Marilee Jones said the change was prompted by an interaction with one MIT student in which, upon asking a group of students, "What do you daydream about?" one boy answered: "We don't daydream. There's no reward for it, so we don't do it."

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Comments

[ERMitchell]

04:20 PM on 08/15/2011

I'm glad they included my alma mater on here, WPI. They are a bit under the radar nationally as a nerd school, but it's no joke. The police force ride around on Segway's (Inventor went there and I think donated them to the school), the fountain monitors the wind speed and adjusts the height accordingly, not the mention the Wedge Rat phenomenon. For academics, they do 12 classes per year, 3 by 4 quarters, and each one included a semesters worth of info in 7 weeks. Sink or swim baby!

[Down in FL]

03:52 PM on 07/30/2011

How many different ways can HuffPo package the same 30 or so schools on this site?

These lists are getting old.

[floodberg]

03:47 PM on 07/24/2011

I didn't go to any of these colleges, but I've always thought I was probaby a nerd.

All my close friends went to these schools. Guess that could be a sign...and I'm not the 'cool' one, either.

[NorwegianBoatOwner]

08:06 AM on 07/20/2011

"I'm not a nerd. I am a level 8 Kobold Sorcerer!"

[Redwood Eagle]

04:09 PM on 07/19/2011

FYI: Carleton is also the founding home of the Reformed Druids of North America, which started the whole Reformed Druid movement. And yes, Reformed Druids are a pretty nerdy bunch, and I'm proud to be one!

[eclipse535]

02:25 AM on 07/16/2011

I always thought Johns Hopkins was nerdy.

[Fieedz91]

01:51 AM on 07/12/2011

How did RPI in Troy, NY not make this list? Our mascot really is the Engineers...

[Kirsten Sasha LopezPalm]

02:55 PM on 07/20/2011

Srsly. The first party I was invited to at RPI was a LAN party.

[floodberg]

03:45 PM on 07/24/2011

So people got drunk and lan'd?  That's so sad.

[Simon Glickman]

12:39 PM on 07/11/2011

As a Reed grad (class of '86) who recently returned for a reunion, I can say you're absolutely correct. And as much as I enjoyed being there, I still didn't know how good I had it.

[realpragmatist]

12:12 AM on 07/11/2011

Berkeley graduate school (especially in Engineering and Computer Science) is possibly the nerdiest place along with MIT and Cal Tech. OK, you can add the Physics department of University of Chicago and Princeton to the mix.

[Cade Bryant]

03:26 AM on 07/09/2011

What? No mention of Stanford......which tied for first place (along with MIT, CMU, and Berkeley) in USN's ranking of the best computer science programs? Stanford - the home of the Natural Language Processing Group, the Artificial Intelligence Library, and the leading-edge Robotics Group? And speaking of Berkeley - remember, Berkeley was the soil from which one of the most popular and robust UNIX distros grew - BSD. Methinks they should have been on the list too.

[realpragmatist]

12:13 AM on 07/11/2011

Stanford, whether considered nerdiest or not, is amongst the best - definitely in a class of its own, if one can get in! ;-)

[floodberg]

03:48 PM on 07/24/2011

I wondered about that one: I have several relatives that went to Stanford for grad school, and they fit right in....

[Growa Brain]

11:02 AM on 07/08/2011

Apparently no one has heard of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology? It's only the number one undgrad science and engineering school in the country, 12 or 13 years running. It boasts a 4/1 guy/ girl average and the ONLY non science/math/engineering major offered is economics. Daily sightings of students wearing capes, cat ears, and pocket protectors only hint at the nerdiness of my Midwest school. A student's idea of a good time here is playing humans vs zombies with nerf guns across campus or D&D at board game club. It is not uncommon to walk in on a CS or CSSE getting off by writing code for Project Euler or Google Codejam.

[Alex Ross]

09:29 AM on 07/11/2011

Just FYI there's no way in hell that RPI is better than Harvey Mudd, especially "12 or 13 years running."

[Growa Brain]

11:44 PM on 08/08/2011

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-no-doctorate

[Growa Brain]

11:50 PM on 08/08/2011

http://www.rose-hulman.edu/news/articles/2010numberone.htm

Not that being the biggest nerd is something to brag about. I'd rather be in Cali for sure, the midwest is lousy.

[slfisher]

03:45 PM on 07/07/2011

Ahem. That's *RPI's* fight song, and it ends "Dis-integrate them, RPI!"

[wpicheer]

09:47 AM on 07/08/2011

Actually, the cheer they posted is correct. I should know, I'm a WPI Cheerleader.

[darcylu]

07:28 PM on 07/08/2011

Yes, it is the WPI cheer. As a parent of a varsity football player several years ago, we enjoyed that cheer at every home game for 4 years.

[Megan MacDonald]

02:22 PM on 07/07/2011

MIT has a business school. Nerdy, yes, but should automatically disqualify from holding the #1 spot. Caltech, on the other hand, doesn't.

[benroberta]

09:27 AM on 07/07/2011

The photo they show for Harvey Mudd with the caption "advanced physics course at Harvey Mudd. No joke" actually comes from the movie A Serious Man (by the Coen brothers) and was shot at St. Olaf college in Northfield, MN. Makes me wonder if the rest of the article is true.

See http://thefilmtalk.com/wp-content/uploads/a-serious-man-blackboard.jpg
(or just do a google image search for "A Serious Man Blackboard")

[nitrokitty]

11:40 AM on 07/07/2011

As an alumni, I can assure you that everything they say about Reed is true. If anything, it's quite understated.

[Boomerang]

06:57 PM on 07/12/2011

"...an alumni"? You need to go back to Reed, or perhaps even back to high school, to learn to speak Latin correctly.

[benroberta]

07:50 PM on 07/07/2011

They've updated it now. I'm not sure the caption is relevant anymore, but it at least appears to be from the college.

[Susan Ann Croteau]

01:49 AM on 07/09/2011

I believe the original still from "A Serious Man" was meant to be taken as a joke--which you clearly didn't find funny. The current photo is indeed from Mudd, depicting one of the challenges the college organizes for the students to blow off steam.

[Vic22]

11:46 PM on 07/06/2011

Present time me continues to keep 17 year old me for not going to Carnegie Mellon. It was truly a nerd haven that I wasn't prepared for at that time in my life, but it would have looked a whole lot better on my resume than my random liberal arts school