The National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are autonomous public institutes of higher education, located in India. They are governed by the National Institutes of Technology Act, 2007, which declared them as institutions of national importance alongside Indian Institutes of Technology. These institutes of national importance receive special recognition from the Government of India. The NIT Council is the supreme governing body of India's National Institutes of Technology (NIT) system and all 31 NITs are funded by the Government of India. All NITs are autonomous which enables them to set up their own curriculum. The language of instruction is English at all these institutes.

NITs offer degree courses at bachelors, masters, and doctorate levels in various branches of engineering, architecture, management and science. Admission to the under-graduate courses such as Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) and Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch) programs in NITs are through the highly competitive Joint Entrance Examination (Main). Admission to postgraduate courses are through the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering for Master of Technology (M.Tech.) and Master of Science programs, Common Admission Test for Master of Business Administration (MBA) program and NIMCET for Master of Computer Applications (MCA) program.

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are autonomous public institutes of higher education, located in India. They are governed by the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961 which has declared them as institutions of national importance and lays down their powers, duties, and framework for governance etc. The Institutes of Technology Act, 1961 lists twenty-three institutes (after the last amendment in 2016). Each IIT is an autonomous institution, linked to the others through a common IIT Council, which oversees their administration. The Minister of Human Resource Development is the ex-officio Chairperson of IIT Council. As of 2018, the total number of seats for undergraduate programmes in all 23 IITs is 11,279.

The first IIT was set up in Kharagpur in 1951, and soon later in Bombay (1958), Madras (1959), Kanpur (1959) and Delhi (1963). An IIT was then established in Guwahati in 1994. The University of Roorkee was converted to IIT Roorkee in 2001. Eight new IITs were set up in Gandhinagar, Jodhpur, Hyderabad, Indore, Patna, Bhubaneswar, Ropar, and Mandi in 2008-09. Around the same time the Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University was given IIT status. Another six new IITs in Tirupati, Palakkad, Dharwad, Bhilai, Goa and Jammu, approved through a 2016 bill amendment were established in 2015-16, along with the conversion of ISM Dhanbad to IIT.

The IITs have a common admission process for undergraduate admissions, the Joint Entrance Examination - Advanced, formerly called the IIT-JEE till 2012. JEE Advanced admits students according to their ranks in the exam. The post-graduate level program that awards M.Tech., MS degrees, and the doctoral programme that offers Ph.D. in engineering is administered by the older IITs. M.Tech. and MS admissions are done on the basis of Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE). Additionally, IITs also award other graduate degrees such as MSc. in Maths, Physics and Chemistry, MBA, etc. Admission to these programs of IITs is done through Common Admission Test (CAT), Joint Admission Test for MSc. (JAM) and Common Entrance Examination for Design (CEED). IIT Guwahati and IIT Bombay offer undergraduate design programmes as well. Joint Seat Allocation Authority conducts the joint admission process for a total of 23 IITs, that offer admission for 10,962 seats in 2017.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, MIT adopted a European polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. The Institute is traditionally known for its research and education in the physical sciences and engineering, but more recently in biology, economics, linguistics and management as well. MIT is often ranked among the world's top universities.

As of March 2018, 91 Nobel laureates, 25 Turing Award winners, and 6 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with MIT as alumni, faculty members or researchers. In addition, 52 National Medal of Science recipients, 65 Marshall Scholars, 45 Rhodes Scholars, 38 MacArthur Fellows, 34 astronauts and 16 Chief Scientists of the U.S. Air Force have been affiliated with MIT. The school also has a strong entrepreneurial culture and the aggregated annual revenues of companies founded by MIT alumni ($1.9 trillion) would rank roughly as the tenth-largest economy in the world (2014). MIT is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU).