diff --git a/references/classification/train.py b/references/classification/train.py
index 789bb8134ff..77f3127782e 100644
--- a/references/classification/train.py
+++ b/references/classification/train.py
@@ -173,8 +173,15 @@ def main(args):
 
     criterion = nn.CrossEntropyLoss()
 
-    optimizer = torch.optim.SGD(
-        model.parameters(), lr=args.lr, momentum=args.momentum, weight_decay=args.weight_decay)
+    opt_name = args.opt.lower()
+    if opt_name == 'sgd':
+        optimizer = torch.optim.SGD(
+            model.parameters(), lr=args.lr, momentum=args.momentum, weight_decay=args.weight_decay)
+    elif opt_name == 'rmsprop':
+        optimizer = torch.optim.RMSprop(model.parameters(), lr=args.lr, momentum=args.momentum,
+                                        weight_decay=args.weight_decay, eps=0.0316, alpha=0.9)
+    else:
+        raise RuntimeError("Invalid optimizer {}. Only SGD and RMSprop are supported.".format(args.opt))
 
     if args.apex:
         model, optimizer = amp.initialize(model, optimizer,
@@ -238,6 +245,7 @@ def parse_args():
                         help='number of total epochs to run')
     parser.add_argument('-j', '--workers', default=16, type=int, metavar='N',
                         help='number of data loading workers (default: 16)')
+    parser.add_argument('--opt', default='sgd', type=str, help='optimizer')
     parser.add_argument('--lr', default=0.1, type=float, help='initial learning rate')
     parser.add_argument('--momentum', default=0.9, type=float, metavar='M',
                         help='momentum')