This article was originally reported in December 2025.
On October 28, 2025, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology held its first Institute-wide mixer for the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), the program that pairs MIT undergraduates with faculty-led research. More than 600 undergraduates met about 150 researchers at the Stratton Student Center to talk about projects in fields from artificial intelligence and the life sciences to the arts. The event was co-hosted by the offices of the chancellor and provost, and President Sally Kornbluth, Provost Anantha Chandrakasan and Chancellor Melissa Nobles all attended (MIT News, December 2, 2025).
New funding and why the mixer mattered
MIT said it would commit up to $1 million in new funding that year, from its schools and the Office of the Provost, to create more UROP positions and meet strong student demand. UROP is already part of most MIT students’ education: more than nine in 10 members of the Class of 2025 did a UROP before graduating, and about 3,200 undergraduates have taken part each year in recent years (MIT News).
“At MIT, we believe in the transformative power of learning by doing, and there’s no better example than UROP,” Kornbluth said. Chancellor Nobles told students there is a UROP for every student regardless of experience. For first-year students, meeting researchers in person was easier than searching online listings: Isabell Luo had already joined Professor Rafael Gómez-Bombarelli’s lab, benchmarking machine-learned interatomic potentials, while other first-years came looking for projects in 3D printing, photonic circuits or for the January Independent Activities Period (IAP). Arielle Berman, a postdoc in the Raman Lab recruiting for a biohybrid-robotics project, said research experience had changed her own path as a first-generation Ph.D. (MIT News).
How UROP works
- Finding a project: students browse project listings on MIT’s ELx platform (elx.mit.edu) or contact faculty directly, then apply through the UROP online system. The UROP office also offers walk-in advising and tips for finding a project (MIT UROP).
- Pay, credit or volunteer: a UROP can be paid directly by the UROP office, paid by the supervisor’s research funds, taken for academic credit, or done as a volunteer. A student cannot receive both pay and credit for the same project in the same term, and students paid through UROP who contribute 80 or more hours in a term get a research notation on their transcript (MIT UROP: Pay & Credit Options).
- Terms and deadlines: UROPs run in fall, spring, IAP (January) and summer, each with its own application deadline. For IAP 2027, first-time first-year and transfer students applying for UROP direct funding had a special deadline of December 1, 2026 (MIT UROP).
What international students should know
- Hour limits apply. During the fall and spring terms, international students may work at most 20 hours a week across all MIT positions combined, including UROPs. According to MIT’s UROP office, the Department of Homeland Security counts credit UROPs toward this limit too, so international students should track their hours and talk to MIT’s International Students Office before accepting a UROP and before the research begins (MIT UROP).
- Aid for international undergraduates. MIT says it is need-blind and meets full demonstrated need for all undergraduates, domestic and international; from 2025–26, students from families earning under $200,000 a year typically pay no tuition (MIT Student Financial Services). IPEDS data show 529 international students among MIT’s 4,535 undergraduates in fall 2025.
- Ranking. MIT is No. 1 among national universities in the 2027 U.S. News Best Colleges ranking and No. 1 in the QS World University Rankings 2027. More on our MIT school page.
- Elsewhere: for how undergraduate research works at other U.S. universities and how to get started, see our guide to undergraduate research.