Best universities for engineering degrees 2019

Find the best colleges for engineering and technology using Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings data

November 29 2018

Studying engineering is a smart choice for career-minded students and there are technical universities all over the world offering world-class degrees.

Most students in Europe enrol on a degree for a specific discipline within engineering. Common specialisations include civil engineering, electrical engineering and chemical engineering.

The 2019 subject ranking for engineering and technology, from Times Higher Education, features 900 universities across more than 70 countries.

Best universities by degree subject

Best universities for arts and humanities
Best universities for business and economics
Best universities for clinical, pre-clinical and health
Best universities for computer science
Best universities for life sciences
Best universities for physical sciences
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Best universities for education degrees

Although the schools at the very top are in the United States and the United Kingdom, universities in Singapore, China and Switzerland perform extremely well and appear high up the rankings.

China is the third most-represented country in the list of the best universities for engineering, ahead of the UK, Germany, Australia and Canada. Only Japan and the United States have a higher number of universities present in the ranking.

The ranking uses the same methodology as the THE World University Rankings, but with a higher weighting for innovation and a lower weighting for citations. The full methodology can be found here.

Scroll down for a full list of degrees covered by the ranking and what you can do with these degrees.

Best universities worldwide

Best universities in the world
Best universities in the United States
Best universities in the UK
Best universities in Canada
Best universities in Australia
Best universities in Europe
Best universities in Singapore
Best universities in China

Top 5 universities for engineering degrees

1. University of Oxford

University of Oxford students are admitted for a specific engineering degree, differing from US universities where students can pick from various strands of engineering to study.

For undergraduates, this will be a four-year course in engineering science or more specifically biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, information engineering or mechanical engineering.

Just under half of all applicants for these courses get through to the interview round and 15 per cent secure a place on a course.

Many Oxford engineering graduates go on to careers as professional engineers, although some enter business, consultancy or further study.

2. Stanford University

Stanford University’s School of Engineering has been at the cutting edge of new technology and innovation for the past century.

There are nine departments in the school, and additional institutes, laboratories and research centres.

Research focuses on 10 of the “most daunting human challenges of the coming decades”. These are: systems design, bioengineering, network security, climate change, robotics, information technology, materials and matter, urban design, affordable accessible healthcare, and computation and data analysis.

Across the nine departments there are eight interdepartmental undergraduate programmes that students can major in.

What can you do with an engineering degree?

What can you do with an aerospace engineering degree?
What can you do with a chemical engineering degree?
What can you do with a civil engineering degree?
What can you do with an electrical engineering degree?
What can you do with a general engineering degree?
What can you do with a mechanical engineering degree?

3. Harvard University

The John A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is the newest school at Harvard University, having been established in 2007. Its roots are in the Lawrence Scientific School, which was founded in 1847 and became a school in its own right in 2007.

The school covers a number of teaching areas such as applied mathematics, applied physics, bioengineering, computer science, electrical engineering, environmental science and engineering, and materials science and mechanical engineering.

Alumni from the school have been awarded a Nobel Prize, a MacArthur Award, a Turing Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship among others.

4. California Institute of Technology

Three of the six academic divisions at the California Institute of Technology teach and research engineering and technology subjects: the biology and biological engineering division, the chemistry and chemical engineering division, and the engineering and applied science division.

Both teaching and research are fairly cross-disciplinary. Undergraduates declare a major at the end of their first year.

There are five distinct engineering majors and an interdisciplinary studies programme that allows students to customise a course of study.

Caltech is one of the smallest universities in the world but prides itself on ambition and innovation.

5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Since 1861, the School of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has produced a stream of products and new technologies to solve engineering problems.

In the past few years, the school has increased its focus on innovation, launching the MIT Innovation Initiative. Research associated with the initiative has led to 60 US patents licensed by multinational companies.

Another parallel initiative provides students with educational experiences, mentoring and funding to encourage their creativity and support their projects.

Laboratories and departments in the school produce a range of research, from insights on food security to soldier nanotechnology.

Student experience studying engineering

Women in STEM: how can we encourage more women into engineering?
Finding a place at the National University of Singapore
International perspective: from Delhi to Toulouse
Women in STEM: looking forward to equality
Two Indian engineering students explain why they chose the University of Toronto
Life at the world's best Millennial university
Women in STEM: stories from MIT students

Best universities for engineering 2019

Click each institution to view its World University Ranking 2019 profile

Engineering Rank 2019	Engineering Rank 2018	University	Country/Region
1	3	University of Oxford	United Kingdom
2	1	Stanford University	United States
3	NR	Harvard University	United States
4	2	California Institute of Technology	United States
5	4	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	United States
6	5	University of Cambridge	United Kingdom
7	6	Princeton University	United States
8	8	National University of Singapore	Singapore
9	9	ETH Zurich	Switzerland
10	11	Georgia Institute of Technology	United States
11	13	University of California, Berkeley	United States
12	10	Imperial College London	United Kingdom
13	NR	University of California, Los Angeles	United States
14	7	Peking University	China
15	16	Nanyang Technological University, Singapore	Singapore
16	17	University of Michigan	United States
17	12	Carnegie Mellon University	United States
18	=14	École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne	Switzerland
19	=18	Delft University of Technology	Netherlands
20	22	Tsinghua University	China
21	NR	Yale University	United States
22	28	University of Texas at Austin	United States
23	=18	Hong Kong University of Science and Technology	Hong Kong
23	=14	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	United States
25	=20	Cornell University	United States
26	=20	Technical University of Munich	Germany
27	24	RWTH Aachen University	Germany
28	25	Purdue University	United States
29	31	University of California, Santa Barbara	United States
30	NR	University of Pennsylvania	United States
31	29	University of Toronto	Canada
32	23	Northwestern University	United States
33	27	Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)	South Korea
34	26	Columbia University	United States
35	33	University of California, San Diego	United States
36	32	Seoul National University	South Korea
=37	50	Zhejiang University	China
=37	34	Johns Hopkins University	United States
=37	35	The University of Tokyo	Japan
40	30	University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong
41	36	UCL	United Kingdom
42	39	University of Science and Technology of China	China
43	41	Shanghai Jiao Tong University	China
44	40	University of Wisconsin-Madison	United States
45	37	KU Leuven	Belgium
46	42	Kyoto University	Japan
=47	NR	Duke University	United States
=47	=63	University of Southern California	United States
49	=47	Fudan University	China
50	=47	Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU)	South Korea
51	49	Rice University	United States
52	54	Pennsylvania State University	United States
53	38	KTH Royal Institute of Technology	Sweden
54	55	Karlsruhe Institute of Technology	Germany
55	71	McGill University	Canada
56	46	University of Manchester	United Kingdom
=57	45	University of Edinburgh	United Kingdom
=57	44	University of Washington	United States
59	65	Tokyo Institute of Technology	Japan
60	43	Technical University of Berlin	Germany
=61	60	City University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong
=61	56	Texas A&M University	United States
63	59	Chinese University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong
=63	57	Monash University	Australia
=63	=52	Ohio State University	United States
65	62	University of British Columbia	Canada
66	58	Technical University of Denmark	Denmark
68	=52	Pohang University of Science and Technology	South Korea
69	51	Eindhoven University of Technology	Netherlands
70	67	Hong Kong Polytechnic University	Hong Kong
70	=63	University of Melbourne	Australia
71	69	University of New South Wales	Australia
=72	=99	Paris Sciences et Lettres – PSL Research University Paris	France
=72	78	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University	United States
74	61	Tohoku University	Japan
75	87	University of Southampton	United Kingdom
=76	66	Australian National University	Australia
=76	70	University of California, Davis	United States
79	NR	New York University	United States
80	68	Brown University	United States
81	72	University of Maryland, College Park	United States
=82	80	Nanjing University	China
=82	79	Chalmers University of Technology	Sweden
84	82	École Polytechnique	France
85	73	University of Queensland	Australia
86	75	University of Bristol	United Kingdom
87	=96	University of Wollongong	Australia
88	74	University of Minnesota Twin Cities	United States
89	101–125	University of California, Irvine	United States
=90	85	Aalborg University	Denmark
=90	=93	TU Dresden	Germany
92	81	National Taiwan University	Taiwan
93	76	University of Sydney	Australia
94	77	University of Stuttgart	Germany
=95	91	University of Colorado Boulder	United States
=95	=89	Indian Institute of Science	India
97	95	University of Erlangen-Nuremberg	Germany
98	92	Tongji University	China
99	176–200	Huazhong University of Science and Technology	China
100	101–125	Korea University	South Korea
101–125	=99	Aalto University	Finland
101–125	101–125	University of Adelaide	Australia
101–125	101–125	Arizona State University	United States
101–125	101–125	University of California, Riverside	United States
101–125	=99	University of Delaware	United States
101–125	88	University of Freiburg	Germany
101–125	151–175	Harbin Institute of Technology	China
101–125	=96	Lund University	Sweden
101–125	151–175	University of Macau	Macao
101–125	101–125	University of Massachusetts	United States
101–125	101–125	Michigan State University	United States
101–125	101–125	National Tsing Hua University	Taiwan
101–125	NR	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	United States
101–125	=93	North Carolina State University	United States
101–125	101–125	University of Notre Dame	United States
101–125	101–125	University of Nottingham	United Kingdom
101–125	=89	Polytechnic University of Milan	Italy
101–125	126–150	Queen Mary University of London	United Kingdom
101–125	101–125	Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna	Italy
101–125	84	University of Sheffield	United Kingdom
101–125	101–125	Technical University of Darmstadt	Germany
101–125	101–125	University of Technology Sydney	Australia
101–125	101–125	Wageningen University & Research	Netherlands
101–125	83	University of Waterloo	Canada
101–125	101–125	Wuhan University	China
101–125	126–150	Xi’an Jiaotong University	China
126–150	101–125	University of Alberta	Canada
126–150	126–150	University of Bath	United Kingdom
126–150	126–150	University of Birmingham	United Kingdom
126–150	126–150	Case Western Reserve University	United States
126–150	126–150	Colorado School of Mines	United States
126–150	101–125	University of Florida	United States
126–150	151–175	Hanyang University	South Korea
126–150	=99	University of Leeds	United Kingdom
126–150	126–150	Linköping University	Sweden
126–150	126–150	University of Luxembourg	Luxembourg
126–150	101–125	Nagoya University	Japan
126–150	86	Norwegian University of Science and Technology	Norway
126–150	126–150	Ruhr University Bochum	Germany
126–150	151–175	Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey	United States
126–150	151–175	University of South Australia	Australia
126–150	126–150	University of Surrey	United Kingdom
126–150	151–175	University of Tennessee, Knoxville	United States
126–150	101–125	University of Twente	Netherlands
126–150	101–125	Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology	South Korea
126–150	NR	Vanderbilt University	United States
126–150	151–175	Victoria University	Australia
126–150	126–150	University of Warwick	United Kingdom
126–150	126–150	University of Western Australia	Australia
126–150	126–150	Yonsei University (Seoul campus)	South Korea
151–175	126–150	University of Bologna	Italy
151–175	126–150	Boston University	United States
151–175	176–200	University at Buffalo	United States
151–175	126–150	University of California, Santa Cruz	United States
151–175	NR	Dartmouth College	United States
151–175	NR	Deakin University	Australia
151–175	101–125	Ghent University	Belgium
151–175	126–150	Griffith University	Australia
151–175	126–150	Indian Institute of Technology Bombay	India
151–175	NR	Jacobs University	Germany
151–175	151–175	King Abdulaziz University	Saudi Arabia
151–175	126–150	Lomonosov Moscow State University	Russian Federation
151–175	176–200	University of Malaya	Malaysia
151–175	151–175	Newcastle University	United Kingdom
151–175	98	Osaka University	Japan
151–175	101–125	Polytechnic University of Turin	Italy
151–175	NR	Pompeu Fabra University	Spain
151–175	126–150	Soochow University	China
151–175	NR	Sorbonne University	France
151–175	126–150	Southeast University	China
151–175	151–175	University of Texas at Dallas	United States
151–175	101–125	Trinity College Dublin	Republic of Ireland
151–175	151–175	University College Dublin	Republic of Ireland
151–175	126–150	Uppsala University	Sweden
151–175	126–150	Vienna University of Technology	Austria
176–200	151–175	Aarhus University	Denmark
176–200	201–250	University of Arizona	United States
176–200	201–250	University of Bayreuth	Germany
176–200	151–175	Brunel University London	United Kingdom
176–200	176–200	Cardiff University	United Kingdom
176–200	NR	Centrale Nantes	France
176–200	176–200	Drexel University	United States
176–200	176–200	University of Duisburg-Essen	Germany
176–200	176–200	University of Exeter	United Kingdom
176–200	176–200	University of Iceland	Iceland
176–200	201–250	Khalifa University	United Arab Emirates
176–200	101–125	Kyushu University	Japan
176–200	176–200	University of Liverpool	United Kingdom
176–200	NR	University of Miami	United States
176–200	NR	Nankai University	China
176–200	176–200	National Chiao Tung University	Taiwan
176–200	201–250	University of Padua	Italy
176–200	201–250	Paris-Sud University	France
176–200	NR	University of Pittsburgh	United States
176–200	176–200	Qatar University	Qatar
176–200	176–200	Queen’s University Belfast	United Kingdom
176–200	176–200	RMIT University	Australia
176–200	251–300	University of Rome III	Italy
176–200	151–175	Sapienza University of Rome	Italy
176–200	151–175	Tianjin University	China
176–200	151–175	Ulm University	Germany