The review was initiated in fall 2016 by the USG, which uses peer sets for academic benchmarking initiatives such as tracking retention and graduation rates as well as for comparisons regarding tuition and fees, faculty salaries, or funding support for higher education. This represents the first update since 2009.

To identify its own set of comparators, Georgia Tech began with its fellow members of the Association of American Universities, which offered additional access to institutional data for more comprehensive analysis.

By combining guidance from the USG with its own criteria and input from academic leadership, Georgia Tech proposed a list of 15 universities, drawn from across the country, that most closely resembled its own mission of teaching, research, and service.

Tech is bound to these institutions at a personal level, too, as more than 400 of the Institute’s tenured or tenure-track faculty earned their terminal degree from this peer set.