Mechanical Engineering is of the hottest bachelor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #17 most popular major in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
College Factual looked at 18 colleges and universities when compiling its 2023 Best Mechanical Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Rocky Mountains Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 2,007 bachelor's degrees in mechanical engineering during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Choosing a Great Mechanical Engineering School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The ME bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality ME program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we include a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on mechanical engineering students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of mechanical engineering students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How easy is it for mechanical engineering to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized mechanical engineering related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for mechanical engineering students working on their bachelor's degree.
The ME 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 Mechanical Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Rocky Mountains Region.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
Best Schools for Bachelor’s Students to Study Mechanical Engineering in the Rocky Mountains Region
Explore the top ranked colleges and universities for mechanical engineering students seeking a a bachelor's degree.
10 Top Rocky Mountains Region Schools for a Bachelor's in ME
Colorado School of Mines is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. Mines is a moderately-sized public school located in the suburb of Golden.
Mechanical Engineering bachelor's degree recipients from Colorado School of Mines receive an earnings boost of around $5,596 above the average earnings of mechanical engineering majors.
Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering has to check out University of Colorado Boulder. Located in the city of Boulder, CU - Boulder is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the ME program make an average of $62,457 in the first couple years of working.
Brigham Young University - Provo is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. Located in the medium-sized city of Provo, BYU is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the ME program report average early career earnings of $63,211.
Colorado State University - Fort Collins is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. Located in the city of Fort Collins, Colorado State is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Soon after graduating, ME bachelor's recipients typically make around $63,141 in their early careers.
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).