You'll be studying one of the lesser sought-after majors if you pursue a degree in computer hardware engineering. It is ranked #1069 out of 1506 major degree programs in terms of popularity. While this may limit the number of schools that offer the degree program, there are still top-quality ones to be found.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Computer Hardware Engineering Schools ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 45 degrees in computer hardware engineering to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Computer Hardware Engineering School
The computer hardware engineering program you select can have a big impact on your future. That's why we developed our collection of Best Schools for Computer Hardware Engineering rankings. In order to come up with a best overall ranking for computer hardware engineering schools, we combine our degree-level rankings, weighting them by the number of degrees awarded at each level.
In order to find the schools that are the best fit for you, you may want to filter to one of the degree levels below.
Computer Hardware Engineering Rankings by Degree Level
The computer hardware engineering school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Computer Hardware Engineering Schools.
More interested in schools in a specific area of the country? Filter this list by region or state.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
Best Schools for Computer Hardware Engineering in the United States
The schools below may not offer all types of computer hardware engineering degrees so you may want to filter by degree level first. However, they are great for the degree levels they do offer.
Any student pursuing a degree in computer hardware engineering has to take a look at Santa Clara University. SCU is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit university located in the medium-sized city of Santa Clara. This university ranks 9th out of 161 colleges for overall quality in the state of California.
There were about 25 computer hardware engineering students who graduated with this degree at SCU in the most recent data year.
University of California - San Diego is a great option for students pursuing a degree in computer hardware engineering. Located in the city of La Jolla, UCSD is a public university with a very large student population. A Best Colleges rank of #49 out of 2,152 schools nationwide means UCSD is a great university overall.
There were about 12 computer hardware engineering students who graduated with this degree at UCSD in the most recent data year.
Oakland University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a degree in computer hardware engineering. Located in the large suburb of Rochester Hills, Oakland is a public university with a fairly large student population. This university ranks 10th out of 56 schools for overall quality in the state of Michigan.
There were about 8 computer hardware engineering students who graduated with this degree at Oakland in the most recent data year.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).