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Computer Engineering

FPGA Whisperers & Bit-Twiddling Demigods

The absolute pinnacle of Computer Engineering. They read x86 assembly for fun and dream in Verilog. If your smart toaster achieves sentience and takes over the grid, a graduate from one of these programs probably wrote its kernel scheduler.

# ▲ University Location Degrees Accept SAT Male/Female Intl Earnings ROI Employ
1 MIT
Cambridge, MA
Cambridge, MA 58 5% 59% / 41% 3% $190,731 100 96% —
2 Stanford
Palo Alto, CA
Palo Alto, CA — 4% — — — — — —
3 U. of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
Berkeley, CA 0 11% — — — 100 — —
4 U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, IL
Champaign, IL 392 37% 85% / 15% 34% $136,097 100 98% —
5 Georgia Tech
Atlanta, GA
Atlanta, GA 171 13% 82% / 18% 18% $131,153 99 98% —
6 Carnegie Mellon
Pittsburgh, PA
Pittsburgh, PA 192 11% 64% / 36% 27% $183,814 100 99% —
7 U. of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, MI
Ann Arbor, MI 114 16% 82% / 18% 17% $123,120 99 96% —
8 Cornell
Ithaca, NY
Ithaca, NY 72 8% 58% / 42% 17% $131,283 99 95% —
9 U. of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX
Austin, TX 312 22% 81% / 19% 3% $123,101 99 98% —
10 Purdue
West Lafayette, IN
West Lafayette, IN 370 43% 86% / 14% 29% $118,081 99 97% —

Segfault Survivors & Kernel Panickers

Giant public powerhouses where the hardware labs look like e-waste hoarding situations. They pump out enough battle-hardened code monkeys to single-handedly staff every cloud infrastructure team and semiconductor fab on Earth. They survive on pure caffeine and unresolved memory leaks.

# ▲ University Location Degrees Accept SAT Male/Female Intl Earnings ROI Employ
1 U. of Washington
Seattle, WA
Seattle, WA 169 42% 78% / 22% 19% $149,484 100 95% —
2 UCLA
Los Angeles, CA
Los Angeles, CA 106 9% 80% / 20% 18% $191,628 100 93% —
3 U. of California, San Diego
La Jolla, CA
La Jolla, CA 207 29% 89% / 11% 25% $154,498 100 97% —
4 U. of California, Davis
Davis, CA
Davis, CA 118 44% 81% / 19% 12% $146,640 100 97% —
5 U. of Wisconsin - Madison
Madison, WI
Madison, WI 75 41% 81% / 19% 23% $145,337 100 98% —
6 U. of Maryland, College Park
College Park, MD
College Park, MD 94 45% 88% / 12% 4% $149,374 100 97% —
7 Texas A&M University - College Station
College Station, TX
College Station, TX 161 52% 89% / 11% 6% $119,310 99 99% —
8 North Carolina State
Raleigh, NC
Raleigh, NC 151 40% 90% / 10% 3% $110,896 99 95% —
9 U. of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA
Santa Barbara, CA 81 38% 89% / 11% 14% $139,942 100 94% —
10 Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA
Blacksburg, VA 192 55% 85% / 15% 16% $123,589 99 97% —
11 Ohio State
Columbus, OH
Columbus, OH — 49% — — — — — —
12 Pennsylvania State
University Park, PA
University Park, PA 71 55% 93% / 7% 24% $110,493 98 98% —
13 U. of Minnesota - Twin Cities
Minneapolis, MN
Minneapolis, MN 57 65% 88% / 12% 9% $101,456 97 93% —

O(1) Touch Grass (Theoretically Computable)

Elite research universities with real ECE muscle, but where CompE leans hard toward the theoretical and the silicon is somebody else's problem. They'll prove the time complexity of your scheduler before they'll touch a logic analyzer or admit they still can't exit Vim.

# ▲ University Location Degrees Accept SAT Male/Female Intl Earnings ROI Employ
1 Caltech
Pasadena, CA
Pasadena, CA — 4% — — — — — —
2 Princeton
Princeton, NJ
Princeton, NJ 47 4% 57% / 43% 6% $161,813 100 — —
3 Columbia
New York, NY
New York, NY 25 4% 76% / 24% 8% $190,478 100 100% —
4 U. of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA
Los Angeles, CA 50 12% 70% / 30% 12% $142,374 99 — —
5 U. of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia, PA 11 5% 64% / 36% 27% $177,544 100 — —
6 Northwestern
Evanston, IL
Evanston, IL 21 7% 76% / 24% 19% $138,897 99 96% —
7 Johns Hopkins
Baltimore, MD
Baltimore, MD 8 6% 50% / 50% 13% $144,486 100 — —
8 Rice
Houston, TX
Houston, TX 36 8% 83% / 17% 11% $139,102 99 100% —
9 Duke
Durham, NC
Durham, NC 92 5% 80% / 20% 4% $174,619 100 98% —

Bricked Microcontroller Brigade

For Computer Engineering specifically, this might be the actual promised land: undergrad-obsessed, hands-on hardware shops where you don't graduate until you've bricked a dev board, hand-rolled a bootloader, and shipped a senior project that actually blinks. Cal Poly SLO (#1) and Rose-Hulman (#2) top the nation's undergrad-focused CompE rankings for a reason, and the service academies and tech institutes here forge the same solder-scarred, sleep-deprived breed. (Mudd's degree is technically 'general Engineering,' but nobody there is scared of a GPIO pin.)

# ▲ University Location Degrees Accept SAT Male/Female Intl Earnings ROI Employ
1 Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo, CA
San Luis Obispo, CA 80 30% 89% / 11% 1% $146,406 100 97% —
2 Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Terre Haute, IN
Terre Haute, IN 27 77% 81% / 19% 11% $123,554 99 98% —
3 Harvey Mudd
Claremont, CA
Claremont, CA — 9% — — — — — —
4 Olin College of Engineering
Needham, MA
Needham, MA — 8% — — — — — —
5 Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Worcester, MA
Worcester, MA — 60% — — — — — —
6 Santa Clara
Santa Clara, CA
Santa Clara, CA 98 48% 82% / 18% 8% $191,635 100 98% —
7 United States Naval Academy
Annapolis, MD
Annapolis, MD 16 9% 88% / 13% 0% $100,172 — — —
8 United States Military Academy
West Point, NY
West Point, NY — 12% — — — — — —
9 United States Air Force Academy
Usaf Academy, CO
Usaf Academy, CO — 12% — — — — — —
10 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY
Troy, NY — 67% — — — — — —
11 Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester, NY
Rochester, NY 54 71% 93% / 7% 11% $122,991 99 98% —
12 Illinois Institute of Technology
Chicago, IL
Chicago, IL 42 66% 79% / 21% 29% $103,105 96 96% —
13 Milwaukee School of Engineering
Milwaukee, WI
Milwaukee, WI 29 67% 90% / 10% 10% $99,744 95 95% —