Top Undergrad Engineering Schools & Universities

The best known and oldest survey currently in widespread use is conducted annually by the weekly magazine US News and World Report. In its specialty school section it divides engineering degree programs into two categories: those at schools with a doctoral program and those without. It is their opinion that the existence of an engineering doctoral program has an important impact on the academic experience of undergraduates; schools with doctoral programs usually have research programs and a strong career orientation.

While the two lists both rate undergraduate engineering programs, the top ranked schools are very different. The doctoral program schools are led by MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech and the University of Michigan. The list of schools without PhD degrees includes the three United States military academies in the top ten; other top ranked schools tend to be small, highly focused institutions such as Harvey Mudd College in California, Cooper Union in New York and Bucknell in Pennsylvania.

In comparing the two US News lists, several factors emerge. The top schools with doctoral programs tend to be large institutions that are research centers not only for engineering, but for medicine and often, for technology as well. The smaller schools attract top flight engineering faculty talent based on reputation. Several are completely dedicated to the study of engineering; there are no other academic programs.

Certainly the academic experience will be different. And while a school with a large engineering department may have the highly scientific engineering specialties such as biomedical engineering and a dynamic research program, the student experience will necessarily be more impersonal. Faculty contact at the non-doctoral schools will be easier, the classes will likely be smaller, and the result is highly focused, top flight training at the undergraduate level. All of them have programs in electrical/electronics engineering, which is the field of study that leads to an IT career.

Among the top twenty five schools with doctoral programs, thirteen are public universities. Five are University of California campuses; the others include Minnesota, Texas, Penn State, Michigan, Maryland, Georgia Tech, Purdue, and Wisconsin. That raises the issue of cost; these schools generally have much lower tuition rates than the private schools, even for out of state students. Public education is still the best deal out there.

But you’ll find some attractive features at the top flight schools without doctoral programs. #10 ranked Milwaukee School of Engineering has more labs than classrooms, and a 14-1 student-faculty ratio. There are no teaching assistants. The one public school among the top ten on this list, Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo, has a 33% acceptance rate. That’s a pretty good chance at a (relatively) affordable, highly ranked undergraduate program. Each of these schools tout excellent acceptance to graduate programs; there’s no reason not to break into an engineering education at a small school and move on to graduate pursuits elsewhere.

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