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 reviewed 6 schools in Virginia to determine which ones were the best for bachelor's degree seekers in the field of mechanical engineering. Combined, these schools handed out 857 bachelor's degrees in mechanical engineering to qualified students.
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 good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination 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 full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for mechanical engineering students working on their bachelor's degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Mechanical Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in Virginia list to help you make the college decision.
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 Virginia
Explore the top ranked colleges and universities for mechanical engineering students seeking a a bachelor's degree.
It's hard to beat Virginia Tech if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. Virginia Tech is a very large public school located in the city of Blacksburg.
Bachelor's recipients from the mechanical engineering program at Virginia Tech earn $7,622 more than the typical college graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
University of Virginia - Main Campus is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. Located in the small suburb of Charlottesville, University of Virginia is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Mechanical Engineering bachelor's degree recipients from University of Virginia - Main Campus get an earnings boost of about $5,868 above the average earnings of mechanical engineering majors.
Old Dominion University is a wonderful option for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. Old Dominion is a fairly large public university located in the city of Norfolk.
Those mechanical engineering students who get their bachelor's degree from Old Dominion University make $3,852 more than the standard ME grad.
George Mason University is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. Located in the suburb of Fairfax, GMU is a public university with a very large student population.
After graduating, ME bachelor's recipients generally earn an average of $61,988 in the first five years of their career.
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).