Just for Fun: Ranking Schools by Engineering Student Body

osuprof
Wed, 19 Oct 2016 14:01:50 +0000

ASEE has data available on engineering enrollees for each school. See, for example,

http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/6848/screen/1?school_name=The+University+of+Texas+at+Austin

Using the 25th-75th percentile ACT scores and taking their midpoint values, here are some of the top schools ranked by their student body (test scores only).

School `Mid-point ACT’
CalTech 34.5
MIT 34
Columbia 34
U Penn 34
Duke 34
Northwestern 34
Rice 34
Hopkins 34
Yale 33.5
Stanford 33 (but data seems to be for entire undergrad body, not for engineering)
UCLA 33
Cornell 33
CMU 33
Brown 33
Michigan 32.5
Georgia Tech 32.5
UIUC 32
Texas 32
Purdue 31

Could not find data: Berkeley, Princeton

Some observations:

1. Schools that are very selective overall not known particularly for engineering (UPenn, Columbia, Duke, Northwestern) still have very selective engineering student bodies, better than the overall average for the undergrad student body. I would not have expected them to match MIT. Exceptions are Yale and possibly Brown, which are very limited in their engineering offerings.

The schools that are more known for engineering (CMU, Cornell) have a somewhat less selective engineering student body, reflecting a somewhat higher acceptance rate for the entire university. Thought it was interesting.

Also, UIUC, Texas, Purdue, and UCLA have much more selective engineering student body than their entire campus, which is probably not surprising at all.

Caveat: All analysis above assumes that the ACT mid-point (calculation explained above) is somehow a representative number for the quality of student body!