Middle East Technical University
state university in Ankara, Turkey

Middle East Technical University (commonly referred to as METU; in Turkish, Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, ODTÜ) is a public research university located in Ankara, Turkey.
The university offers 41 undergraduate programs across five faculties and 105 master's and 70 doctoral programs through five graduate schools. The main campus of METU spans an area of 11,100 acres (4,500 ha), comprising, in addition to academic and auxiliary facilities, a forest area of 7,500 acres (3,000 ha), and the natural Lake Eymir. METU has more than 120,000 alumni worldwide. The official language of instruction at METU is English.
METU is highly competitive and exclusively looks for top scores across the board. Most departments only accept the top 1% of the roughly 1.5 million students who take the Turkish National University Entrance Examination.
METU had the greatest share in national research funding by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) in the last five years. Over 40% of METU's undergraduate alumni choose to pursue graduate studies.
History
Foundation and vision
In 1954, Charles Abrams from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, commissioned by the United Nations to study housing issues and the state of architectural, urban and regional planning education in the Middle East, visited Turkey.
The public source identifies “Middle East Technical University” as state university in Ankara, Turkey. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Middle, East and Technical.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q756126. VIAF identifies the subject as 312788188. The Library of Congress control number is n50053110. Authority coordinates are 39.886, 32.784. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954.
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This entry incorporates text from “Middle East Technical University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.