Nicknamed "the MIT of Iran",[citation needed] it is widely considered to be the nation's most prestigious and leading institution for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

Every year, the smartest and the most prospective students in Iran, ranked according to the results of the Iranian University Entrance Exam, choose to study at SUT at Bachelor's, Master's as well as PhD levels.

Undergraduate admission to Sharif is limited to the top 800 of the 500,000 students who pass the national entrance examination administered annually by the Iranian Ministry of Science, Research and Technology.

[7][8] In the 2014 Times Higher Education top 100 for newer universities (less than 50 years old), SUT ranked 1st in the Middle East, 6th in Asia, and 27th in the world.

[12] In 1972, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi appointed Sayyed Hosein Nasr as president of the university with the goal of modeling the school based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but with roots in Iranian culture.

In 2006, a serious controversy resulting in physical tensions, occurred after Basij attempted to bury bodies of unknown martyrs of the Iran–Iraq War at the universities' Mosque court.

Its mission is to enhance professional, academic, and social contacts among its membership, and to strengthen the ties between the association members living outside of Iran and the university.

[27] Alumni in academics include the late Maryam Mirzakhani, professor of mathematics at Stanford University and the first woman to be awarded a Fields Medal.

Imprisoned human rights blogger Kouhyar Goudarzi was an aerospace student at Sharif until pressure from state security forces allegedly caused his dismissal.

[28] Omid Kokabee, an applied physics and mechanics alumnus,[29] was arrested while visiting Iran during his postdoctoral research in University of Texas at Austin.