Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, or RPI, is a large university in Troy, New York, near Albany, founded in 1824 by Stephen Van Rensselaer. It is the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world.

Rensselaer ranks among the top 50 national universities in the United States by US News & World Report. For 2005, the School of Engineering for undergraduates is ranked 16th in the nation. In 2004, the School of Engineering for graduate students was ranked 33rd in the nation. In 2003, the Lally School of Management & Technology undergraduate program was ranked 22nd. Its Entrepreneurship program was ranked 13th in 2002. The Multimedia/Visual Communications graduate program has been ranked 8th in 2003 and 2004. The Applied Mathematics graduate program has been 21st in the nation in 2003 and 2004.

Rensselaer has five schools: Architecture, Engineering, Humanities & Social Sciences, Management, and Science. RPI is a technology-oriented university; all of the residence hall rooms have hard-wired high speed internet access, and all incoming freshman have been required to purchase a laptop computer since 1999. In 2004, The Princeton Review ranked RPI #1 for having the "most connected campus."

The current President of RPI is Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson. Dr. Jackson’s career prior to becoming Rensselaer’s president has encompassed senior positions in government, as Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission; in industry and research, as a theoretical physicist at the former AT&T Bell Laboratories; and in academe, as a professor of theoretical physics at Rutgers University.

RPI is home to the United States' first on-campus high-tech business incubator. Bruce Watson and Pulickel Ajayan, are among the highly regarded researchers at RPI. RPI is also the professional home of David Musser, one of the primary inventors of the C++ Standard Template Library. One of the largest companies to have originated in the incubator is MapInfo, a major publisher of mapping and geographic information systems software who is still headquartered in Troy, NY

In the 2004-2005 academic year, RPI's enrollment includes 4,888 undergraduate and 1,291 graduate students. Base tuition for a year of undergraduate attendance is $28,950 (not including room, board, or other expenses).

The school features a competitive Division I ice hockey team, the Engineers, who won NCAA national titles in 1954 and 1985. The team plays a significant role in the campus' culture, drawing thousands of fans each week to the Houston Field House during the season. The team's popularity even sparked the tradition of the "hockey line", where students line up for season tickets months in advance of the on-sale date. The official nickname of some of the school's other Divison III teams was changed in 1995 from the Engineers to the Red Hawks. (In addition to hockey, the football, cross-country, tennis, and track and field teams all chose to retain the Engineers name.) RPI's unofficial mascot is the albino squirrel .