Best universities for engineering degrees 2023
Find the best colleges for engineering and technology using Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings 2023 data

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Top 10 universities in the world for engineering
Scroll down for the full list of best universities in the world for engineering
Engineering rank 2023 | Engineering rank 2022 | University | Country/region |
1 | 1 | Harvard University | United States |
2 | 2 | Stanford University | United States |
3 | 3 | University of California, Berkeley | United States |
4 | 4 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | United States |
5 | 6 | University of Oxford | United Kingdom |
6 | 8 | California Institute of Technology | United States |
7 | 5 | University of Cambridge | United Kingdom |
8 | 10 | National University of Singapore | Singapore |
9 | 7 | Princeton University | United States |
10 | 9 | ETH Zurich | Switzerland |
Studying engineering is a smart choice for career-minded students, and there are universities all over the globe offering world-class degrees.
Most students enrol on a degree for a specific discipline within engineering. Common specialisations include civil engineering, electrical engineering and chemical engineering.
The 2023 subject ranking for engineering and technology from Times Higher Education features 1,306 universities across more than 70 countries.
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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 second most-represented country in the list of the best universities for engineering, ahead of the UK, Germany, Australia and Canada. Only the United States has 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 information on what you can do with these degrees.
Best universities in Australia for engineering degrees
Best universities in Canada for engineering degrees
Best universities for engineering degrees in the UK
Best universities for engineering degrees in the US
Top 5 universities for engineering degrees
5. 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 to 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
The MIT School of Engineering is one of five schools at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the largest of the five.
The school offers both undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and encourages students at all levels to conduct research.
The school has eight academic departments and two interdisciplinary institutes. Departments include aeronautics and astronautics, biological engineering, mechanical engineering, nuclear science and engineering, among others.
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. University of California, Berkeley
The College of Engineering is one of 14 schools and colleges at the University of California, Berkeley. The department was first established in 1931.
Students can choose to pursue a number of different areas, including civil and environmental engineering, mechanical engineering and nuclear engineering, among others.
Notable alumni of the college include Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, Marc Tarpenning, the co-founder of Tesla, Andrew Ng, co-founder and executive chairman of Coursera, and Peter Norvig, director of research at Google.
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, as well as 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.
1. 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 of the school have been awarded a Nobel prize, a MacArthur Fellowship Award, a Turing Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among others.
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Best universities for engineering 2023
Click each institution to view its World University Ranking 2023 profile
Editors note: As part of our THE statement on Ukraine published on 2 March 2022, Russian universities have been given less prominence in our rankings. Russian and Belarusian universities that met the criteria for this ranking are not displayed in the table above.