The title explains itself, I am looking for universities and colleges that are small, undergrad focused but that teach engineering. Also, since I can’t seem to find any schools like this is it because they are worse than large research institutions like MIT or GAtech, or are there small colleges that have the same level are recognition when it comes to getting employed or going to grad school?
Thanks!
Off the top of my head…
Rice
Swarthmore
Dartmouth
Tufts
Smith (if you identify as female)
Bucknell
LeHigh
Lafayette
Gonzaga
LMU
Santa Clara
^^ all of those, plus union (ny), franklin & marshall, davidson, and harvey mudd
There are a number of smaller schools that are engineering focused (so they would not necessarily be “liberal arts colleges”), but they may be suitable for your wants. Some examples:
Public:
Colorado School of Mines
Missouri University of Science and Technology
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
Private:
California Institute of Technology
Cooper Union
Harvey Mudd College
Illinois Institute of Technology
Milwaukee School of Engineering
Olin College of Engineering
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rose Hulman Institute of Technology
Stevens Institute of Technology
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Add Union College (NY) and Smith College (women’s college) to the list. (oops - I was typing when @Kalons already posted Union).
Engineering programs that are ABET certified all have a very structured curriculum that is quite similar in their engineering coursework. This includes all of these LACs that have been mentioned here and above. So you can certainly get solid engineering credentials from these schools.
By attending a LAC as an engineering major, you may have additional humanities requirements, depending upon the school. This means that your education is more likely to be well rounded and you may graduate with stronger communication skills than someone who graduated from a standard engineering tech school. You will also be surrounded by students majoring in all sorts of things, adding another dimension to your college experience that a traditional tech school might not offer.
On the other hand, some of the schools like Smith and Harvey Mudd offer only a general engineering degree. If you are very determined to specialize right off the bat in a particular type of engineering, be sure to research each school’s program to see if they offer it. But also note that Smith and Mudd graduates do quite well getting jobs with these general engineering degrees.
Rice
Mudd
Rose Hulman
ucbalumnus presented a good list of smaller schools that focus on engineering. I’d pursue one of those or similar before I’d consider a more liberal arts focused college. Engineering education requires a fair number of classes and so will fill most of your time. Engineering also commands a fair amount of money to run labs and have the facilities necessary for a good education. A school that is primarily liberal arts might not have the resources to provide a reasonable engineering program.
Most engineering colleges these days also have extensive “liberal arts” focused classes. Even MIT does. MIT has departments in Anthropology, Writing, Economics (was quite an impressive list of people in it when I was there), Health Sciences, Linguistics, Philosophy, Literature, History, Music and Theater Arts, Political Science, etc. MIT students are required to take one class a term in these subjects for a degree.
There are lots of choices of colleges out there. Go visit them and talk to their students or if you can’t visit, spend some time looking to see there web sites. Reading the student newspaper for a college can one a good insight into that school.
As the previous comments illustrate, there are multiple possible interpretations of “Liberal Arts Style Engineering School.”
If you’re interested in a true “liberal arts college” that also has engineering, then you’d be looking at schools like Swarthmore, Lafayette, and Smith. These schools offer a very solid engineering foundation, but not the variety of specialties that you would find at a large university or a STEM specialty school.
Then there are the small universities that offer liberal arts, sciences, and engineering. These would include Rice, Bucknell, Lehigh, U of Rochester, Tufts, Santa Clara, and so on.
Then you have the STEM schools that resemble LAC’s in size, but not in focus. RPI, WPI, RIT, Rose-Hulman, Caltech…
And there are a few that defy all of those categories. Olin is super-small and has a unique project-based curriculum. Harvey Mudd calls itself a LAC but is extremely STEM-focused with an extremely rigorous STEM core; but it’s also part of the Claremont Consortium, allowing cross-registration and shared programs with the other four LAC’s that offer extremely strong humanities and social sciences.
And of course there are the larger universities that span engineering and liberal arts, but do not offer the smaller-school attributes.
So, the answer to your question depends on what exactly you have in mind. But in each category there are certainly schools that are top-notch.
I’ve heard Duke’s engineering school (Pratt) allows students to take more liberal arts courses than you do at a typical engineering programs at top notch large universities.
Check out Valparaiso University.
“Liberal Arts Style Engineering Schools??”
There are universities which offer engineering with different course designs and with different faculty/student attitudes. Harvey Mudd is a clear example of this, but it lacks a variety of engineering majors as it believes in the concept of interdisciplinary thinking. That is, engineering education requires the development of a basic tool set and learning experiences that require application designing problem solutions. Dogged self-teaching is integral to the development of solutions to problems where technological change is exponential.
The concept of interdisciplinary thinking goes beyond just the classic science/math preparation for engineering. It requires a serious respect for interdisciplinary thinking that extends beyond those classic science/engineering basics into the humanities and into the social sciences. It is difficult to design solutions to real life problems where the design does not appreciate or understand the problems surrounding the application of solutions. Engineering is growing up! This is where the “liberal arts” approach comes into play. It is not just a course listing, but a student/faculty attitude which takes hold of the process.
Courses can be designed to relay to students not just the content of their specific subject, but also to incorporate, where appropriate, brain like receptors to link seemingly unrelated fields. Nature is interdisciplinary. It is my belief that many majors in the humanities and the social sciences suffer from the same short shortsightedness. Calling your college a STEM school or a LA school does not, by default, change the nature of the problem. It is an attitude of mutual respect that must be reflected by faculty, students, course design and real life project solutions. This is what I would call a “Liberal Arts Style Engineering School.”
A short list of Engineering programs I would place on this list would be Stanford, MIT, Dartmouth, Brown, Harvey Mudd, Olin, Rice and WPI. Trinity College (CT), Smith College and Union College (NY), et al are also out their. Stanford, MIT, WPI and Rice have fully developed programs with a wide selection of engineering concentrations.
For years the “boot camp” approach to engineering proudly boasted their “real men” approach to engineering as some sort of competitive “survival of the fittest.” As an old school WPI graduate ('67), I took a special pride in the opinion of a fellow alumnus who recently noted: “WPI has morphed into a blend of non Engineering touchy feely.” I guess we finally made it out of the foxhole! The WPI “IQP” plays a unique and very special role in this educational process See https://www.wpi.edu/project-based-learning/wpi-plan.
It’s been mentioned a couple times already, but Union in Schenectedy was the school that immediately popped into my head.
Jumping in with another suggestion and then a related question-
One way to get the LAC experience and the engineering degree is with a 3-2 program (3 years on campus of a small LAC, then a transfer to a larger school with 2 years of intensive engineering courses). These are fairly commonly offered.
Related question, since my 3rd kid seems at this point to be heading toward engineering, although he’s only entering 9th grade so that could change, but anyway, how hard is it to do a semester abroad as an engineering student? I’m guessing if you come in a little ahead with some AP STEM credits it might be doable but just curious.
I don’t think Western New England University or Alfred University have been mentioned yet. Both schools are small, undergraduate-focused, private universities in the Northeast that might be of interest to you.
Without knowing anything about the OP’s stats, it’s hard to make recommendations. While schools like Rice, Harvey Mudd, and Rose Hulman are terrific, they also have very high standards for admission.
When S wanted a smaller, more liberal arts feeling school with a strong engineering program, we started with the list of schools with ABET-accredited programs. That’s the biggest factor in finding a job - is having an accredited degree. You can find those schools here: http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx
We then focused on the parts of the country he was interested in, and went through the schools to find matches for his criteria.
I strongly second the recommendation for Valparaiso - wonderful school, great facilities, but with a small liberal arts feeling. S almost went there, but instead ended up at Bradley in Illinois - which has 20% engineering majors, and significant funding from Caterpillar International (they’re building a new combined engineering/business building right now with funds from Caterpillar).
@washugrad, doing a semester abroad as an engineering major is extremely difficult, even with AP credits, because of the pre-requisites and sequencing of courses. Very few engineering programs will accept credits from abroad, in part because they have to meet ABET requirements. Some schools are starting to set up programs abroad specifically for STEM students. Other schools, such as Bradley, have a couple of week long winter term where students go abroad. Not the same experience as an entire semester, but it doesn’t disrupt the major.
Mudd is probably the closest to what you are asking for. But it is very selective.
3+2 sound great in theory, but even students who intend to do them rarely end up doing so.
@washugrad - most of my daughter’s friends (all Purdue engineers) took a semester abroad or worked a semester co-op out of state junior year. They had fabulous experiences but it must be noted that few of them are graduating in 4 years. 
It’s actually fairly normal for engineers to take an extra semester (or two) to finish their degree even coming in with a lot of AP credits. If you are willing to anticipate (and pay for) that happening then planning for a semester abroad is reasonable.
However, relatively few students who start with 3+2 intentions transfer to the “2” school. For example:
https://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/engineering/questions/
In addition, a 3+2 program involves five years of costs, and both admission to and financial aid at the “2” school may be unknown to the student starting at the “3” school. There may also be limited exposure to engineering course work and extracurriculars at a “3” school that does not have a “native” engineering program.
Lafayette
Case Western Reserve University (the Western Reserve College was a liberal arts college that merged with Case Institute Technology in 1967)
Also check out 3-2 programs where you go to a liberal arts college for 3 years (taking the eng core like Calculus, Chem , Physics) and then go to an engineering school for 2 years and get degrees ffrom both colleges.
Semester abroad for engineering and graduating on time is tough. I know two people who did it, one at Cornell and one at Stanford. They both had to start planning for this freshman year, and load up on their requirements while at their college, so that their semester abroad was entirely electives. This often involves staying on campus over the summer as well to finish some of the required courses, because many of them have to be taken in sequence and can’t be lumped together in a single semester.
To the OP, I recommend visiting a few of the schools mentioned above, and then visiting some larger schools. There is a huge difference in facilities and programs between some of the small schools like Lafayette and Union, and a large research university. There’s definitely a trade-off in choosing a smaller school vs. a large one with big labs, lots of project teams, etc. My D thought she wanted a small school for engineering, but changed her mind after actually seeing where she would be learning and working.
Also, I know this was touched on above, but in pursuing an engineering curriculum, there is not a lot of room for exploration in the liberal arts, so choosing a liberal arts college will not necessarily give you more access to these courses - there are only so many hours in a day, and if 75-80% of your courseload is made up of required science, math and engineering classes, you may just have to settle for whatever liberal arts classes fit around that schedule.