Best universities for engineering degrees 2018

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

October 17 2017

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 2018 subject ranking for engineering and technology, from Times Higher Education, features 500 universities across 50 different countries.

Best universities by degree subject

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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 best universities for engineering, ahead of Germany, Australia and Canada.

The ranking uses the same methodology as the Times Higher Education 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 a degree in them.

Best universities worldwide

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Best universities in the United States
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Top 5 universities for engineering degrees

1. 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.

2. California Institute of Technology

Three of the six academic divisions at Caltech 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 is 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.

3. University of Oxford

Unlike in the United States, University of Oxford students are admitted for a specific engineering degree.

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.

4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Since 1861, the School of Engineering at MIT 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.

5. University of Cambridge

At the University of Cambridge, students can specialise in a full range of engineering topics, including instrumentation, sustainability and aerothermal engineering.

Unlike some UK courses, the programme allows flexible study options to combine various topics.

All colleges in Cambridge accept engineering applicants, but some colleges prefer students to take a year out before applying.

There are seven applications per place but the course overall is fairly large, with more than 300 students enrolled in any one year.

Student experience studying engineering

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Best universities for engineering 2018

Click each institution to view its World University Ranking 2018 profile

Engineering Rank 2018	University	Country
1	Stanford University	United States
2	California Institute of Technology	United States
3	University of Oxford	United Kingdom
4	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	United States
5	University of Cambridge	United Kingdom
6	Princeton University	United States
7	Peking University	China
8	National University of Singapore	Singapore
9	ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich	Switzerland
10	Imperial College London	United Kingdom
11	Georgia Institute of Technology	United States
12	Carnegie Mellon University	United States
13	University of California, Berkeley	United States
=14	École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne	Switzerland
=14	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	United States
16	Nanyang Technological University	Singapore
17	University of Michigan	United States
=18	Delft University of Technology	Netherlands
=18	Hong Kong University of Science and Technology	Hong Kong
=20	Cornell University	United States
=20	Technical University of Munich	Germany
22	Tsinghua University	China
23	Northwestern University	United States
24	RWTH Aachen University	Germany
25	Purdue University	United States
26	Columbia University	United States
27	Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)	South Korea
28	University of Texas at Austin	United States
29	University of Toronto	Canada
30	University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong
31	University of California, Santa Barbara	United States
32	Seoul National University	South Korea
33	University of California, San Diego	United States
34	Johns Hopkins University	United States
35	University of Tokyo	Japan
36	University College London	United Kingdom
37	KU Leuven	Belgium
38	KTH Royal Institute of Technology	Sweden
39	University of Science and Technology of China	China
40	University of Wisconsin-Madison	United States
41	Shanghai Jiao Tong University	China
42	Kyoto University	Japan
43	Technical University of Berlin	Germany
44	University of Washington	United States
45	University of Edinburgh	United Kingdom
46	University of Manchester	United Kingdom
=47	Fudan University	China
=47	Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU)	South Korea
49	Rice University	United States
50	Zhejiang University	China
51	Eindhoven University of Technology	Netherlands
=52	Ohio State University	United States
=52	Pohang University of Science and Technology	South Korea
54	Pennsylvania State University	United States
55	Karlsruhe Institute of Technology	Germany
56	Texas A&M University	United States
57	Monash University	Australia
58	Technical University of Denmark	Denmark
59	Chinese University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong
60	City University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong
61	Tohoku University	Japan
62	University of British Columbia	Canada
=63	University of Melbourne	Australia
=63	University of Southern California	United States
65	Tokyo Institute of Technology	Japan
66	Australian National University	Australia
67	Hong Kong Polytechnic University	Hong Kong
68	Brown University	United States
69	University of New South Wales	Australia
70	University of California, Davis	United States
71	McGill University	Canada
72	University of Maryland, College Park	United States
73	University of Queensland	Australia
74	University of Minnesota	United States
75	University of Bristol	United Kingdom
76	University of Sydney	Australia
77	University of Stuttgart	Germany
78	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University	United States
79	Chalmers University of Technology	Sweden
80	Nanjing University	China
81	National Taiwan University	Taiwan
82	École Polytechnique	France
83	University of Waterloo	Canada
84	University of Sheffield	United Kingdom
85	Aalborg University	Denmark
86	Norwegian University of Science and Technology	Norway
87	University of Southampton	United Kingdom
88	University of Freiburg	Germany
=89	Indian Institute of Science	India
=89	Polytechnic University of Milan	Italy
91	University of Colorado Boulder	United States
92	Tongji University	China
=93	North Carolina State University	United States
=93	TU Dresden	Germany
95	University of Erlangen-Nuremberg	Germany
=96	Lund University	Sweden
=96	University of Wollongong	Australia
98	Osaka University	Japan
=99	Aalto University	Finland
=99	University of Delaware	United States
=99	University of Leeds	United Kingdom
=99	Paris Sciences et Lettres – PSL Research University Paris	France