 Acceptance to the university is highly competitive and entrance to all undergraduate and graduate programs requires scoring among the top 1% of students in the Iranian University Entrance Exam, also known as "Konkoor", which comes from a simile French word "concours", meaning competition.The university was founded in 1928, during the reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi, in Tehran and was named the "Institute of Communications" ().It is therefore considered to be the oldest surviving academic institution across the country.