Being a current
student, I have quite a few thoughts on this place. First, it's the
oldest engineering school in the
world. We are a favorite among businesses, we get hired everywhere.
Engineers from
RPI get jobs quite easily and go on to do great things (like go to grad school at
MIT or
Caltech where they proceed to forget about their RPI
roots).
RPI is famous for things like the Brooklyn Bridge, the Ferris Wheel, MapQuest and the worst female population at any University (we call them gyno-americans); The male: female ratio is actually 4:1.
RPI also does a lot of cutting edge research with other schools that get all the credit because they have a division 1 football team(or basketball, etc).
The Fraternity/Sorority system at RPI is also big, but not forced.
One of the best things about RPI is the fact that the faculty actually runs the place like a business. So you are hated by the school, but loved for the money you're paying to go there. This basically means the food sucks, and we have no regular food vendors on campus.