If there is desire to study abroad, one can attend a foreign university as an international student for the entire degree. Some are not that expensive by US standards even for international students.
If you are decided that you want to be an engineer, IMO you are best served by starting in engineering and graduating in four years. As other posters have noted, the requirements for ABET accreditation require a specific sequence of courses and the majority of the curriculum is comprised of the background basic and advanced science, math, general engineering, discipline-specific engineering, and design coursework. There are many labs both in the engineering and science courses, and all engineering schools require a significant capstone design project, which requires a substantial commitment of time. In this respect, engineering is a dedicated professional undergraduate course of study, it is not a adjunct to a general liberal arts curriculum.
That said, it is certainly possible to combine liberal arts and engineering. All ABET accredited schools require a significant liberal arts component, also remember that math and science are also part of liberal arts. You don’t necessarily have to attend a liberal arts college with engineering to get a good liberal arts curriculum (as the other poster too pointed out, attending a LAC instead of a STEM-based school doesn’t necessarily mean you can take more liberal arts because the requirements for the engineering curriculum are the same in all ABET-accredited schools), and yes, you should only consider ABET accredited programs. Many employers, government agencies, and state engineering licensing boards will not consider non-ABET degree holders (by the way, ABET accredits programs not schools. It is possible for a school to have some ABET accredited engineering programs, and others that are not accredited). Some LACs offer a “BA in engineering”, which is not accredited since it doesn’t follow the ABET curriculum requirements and has more liberal arts content (those should be avoided if your objective is a career in engineering).
Carleton College actually has a 3+3 (6 year) or 4+3 (7 year) program? They are serious? 6 or 7 years (and tuition) to get a four year degree? No sane person would consider such a thing.
In any school, you aren’t limited to only the liberal arts courses the school requires for an engineering degree, you can take more than the minimum requirement for example.
The longer ones end with a master’s degree, rather than just two bachelor’s degrees.
https://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/engineering/about/
This does not necessarily make them all that desirable in the general case, for the usual reasons that 3+2 programs are not all that desirable in the general case.
If study abroad in engineering is of interest, take a look at overseas project work in science and engineering fields at WPI. As far as I know, this is a one-of-a-kind program. Students study over here in preparation for immersion in overseas project research that last seven weeks at the project center. The $5,000 cost of the project center participation is covered by a credit to the students tuition. Generally speaking, these are not classes but involve the design of real would project solutions at over forty project centers all over the world. The projects are done in teams. See https://www.wpi.edu/project-based-learning/global-project-program
Small coed liberal arts colleges with engineering majors:
Swarthmore
Union
Lafayette
Bucknell
Trinity (CT)
Haverford has a 4+1program with UPenn that results in a BA/BS from Haverford and a Masters from UPenn.
https://www.haverford.edu/engineering/41-program-university-pennsylvania
Not sure what your stats, financial concerns, or geographic preferences are but since my daughter was looking for a liberal arts school with engineering, I’ll share the ones she liked and admissions results (she was a 3.9uw / 32ACT w/ strong EC’s but not particularly STEM focuses EC’s):
Gonzaga
Santa Clara
LMU
Rice (not admitted)
WashU (wait-list)
Wake Forest
Notre Dame (not admitted)
University of Dayton** (I think this is worth looking into)
Vanderbilt (not admitted)
USC (not admitted)
Tulane
SMU (attending - just finished 1st year … she liked the size of the school, opportunities in Dallas, offerings in the engineering school, and they offered good merit scholarships)
@doschicos - The Haverford program does not result in an undergraduate degree in engineering. It provides only a BA from Haverford, which is neither in engineering or ABET accredited. A master’s degree in engineering does not replace or superseed an undergraduate (BS or BE) degree in engineering, because it is usually specialized in a particular problem or subspecialty within an an engineering discipline (eg, mechanical, electrical, civil, etc). A master’s degree does not include the general and fundamental discipline-specific engineering courses, the engineering-specific science courses, the basic engineering labs, and the capstone design course sequence that provide the undergraduate foundation.
Many employers and most government agencies will not hire without an ABET accredited undergraduate engineering degree for engineering positions. Also, if your career goal is to obtain a Professional Engineer license (required in some engineering positions), you must have an ABET accredited undergrad engineering degree.
You aren’t really an engineer without the “first professional” or undergrad degree. Without it, you won’t have the foundation engineering science and analysis/design training that is the basis of engineering. Again, the master’s degree isn’t the equivalent, as it does not provide that foundation training. Some graduate engineering schools won’t accept non-engineering undergrads into their engineering programs, I’m surprised UoP does.
The 3/2 programs provide an accredited undergrad engineering degree and they are better bets. As they say, buyer beware.
I read this thread with a bit of a grin, because it’s obvious some of the posters have never set foot on the campuses of the schools they are recommending and used a single metric in their list, size. There is a MASSIVE difference in the number of toys, depth of curriculum and quality of facilities among the schools listed.
You should grab a copy of DIY College Rankings by Michelle Kretzmer. It is a very powerful tool, basically an easily searchable spreadsheet of all the IPEDS data. You can get it for free, but it is very cumbersome. Michelle makes it very easy to use for very little money, about the price of a nice book. One of the things you can search is the number of engineering classes each school offers. The tiny programs like Union and Swarthmore offer less than 50 whereas a big institutional program like Illinois will offer over 1000. You will be competing with those much better educated folks.
That’s not to say there are no strong small programs. There ate. Just be very sceptical and visit. Once you do that, it will become very obvious which ones are worthy of consideration.
As a side note, you will get better information if you are active in your thread. Particularly, if you provide your stats, region(s) you prefer, whether you want urban or rural or suburban, and your hobbies, we could formulate a better list of candidates for you.
Good luck!
@eyemgh - One small comment on your rather condescending post. Size of program doesn’t dictate or even imply relative quality of education. You cannot take 1,000 courses in engineering as a bachelor’s candidate. Anecdotally, my spouse is a PhD in Engineering who did his undergrad at Stanford. At his workplace (FFRDC) he has colleagues who did their BS degrees at MIT, Berkeley, UMich, UT… Cooper Union and Swarthmore. Without question the larger schools have more toys but they also have more classes with hundreds of students sitting in a lecture hall as their only contact with a professor where the actual teaching is done in “section” by grad student TAs… which isn’t what some people feel is a “quality” education. I would agree with you that you need to visit any school in order to assess its fit.
Add Case Western Reserve University to the list as well.
@camom13, I was not implying that more classes is defacto better in isolation. It is simply another factor that must be placed into context. I am also not a fan of giant lectures and over utilization of teaching assistants. I do believe however that if that choice was binary, I’d choose the better equipped, deeper curriculum, every day. Notice my response said “among the schools listed.” They are all smallish schools, not the UCBs or the Michigans of the world. My intent was to show that some of the very small programs represent a massive, and in my mind, unnecessary, compromise given the choices out there.
Fortunately, there exist what I feel is the holy grail in engineering, schools with good toys, complete curricula, smaller classes, irrespective of the overall university size, and little use of TAs. Lehigh, Rose-Hulman, HMC, WPI, Case, RPI, and Cal Poly are all strong examples.
Sorry but I agree with @eyemgh
I visited Union NY and RPI on our school trips.
Both were friendly and open to discuss directly with profs as a visitor.
But when I asked a Union prof about upper level specialty classes, his answer was “you can learn that on the job”.
Well first you have to get the job. Second, I am paying tuition to a school, same tuition at both schools, but a very different set of courses offered. In the end, the main thing you are buying is the ability to take courses, for an undergrad student. Yes there are lots of intangibles, but coursework leading to a useful degree is what you primarily pay for. Looking at the facilities for a mech eng, Union NY had an old warehouse full of cobwebs with what looked like our high school machine shop. RPI had a lab that was more similar to a major manufacturer. For someone who does not know what they want to do with life, a small liberal arts college may be a great place to continue your education and find yourself. But most engineering aspirants are more career focused. We only looked at small LA colleges due to athletic recruiting, and opened up to those with small engineering programs. So lucky my son ended up recruited by a school with the more substantive academic curriculum. Being with more STEM kids at RPI he is learning from other students, from top quality faculty, it is undergrad focused (more than a big univ). I feel a small tech school gives the best of both worlds, relevant coursework but not treated like a number. Didn’t feel comfortable after visiting Union that my kid would get as good an education as RPI, WPI.
I also agree with the comment about participating in your own thread. I almost did not respond for that reason.
Clarification during a two way convo is useful. Like why “a liberal arts college”, do you mean small or undergrad focused or less engineering, more liberal arts courses and WHY? I will not comment further on this without feedback from OP.
There are 15 Liberal Arts schools with engineering per this list: http://www.findengineeringschools.org/Search/Special_Unique/liberal_arts_colleges.htm
The smaller ones (Mudd, Swat) offer only general engineering (no specialization). There is no doubt that there are fewer toys, but the trade-off comes in exposure to both individuals and ideas.
I am the parent of a Swarthmore Engineering Grad (in 7 days), who is turning down jobs with both direct and indirect engineering relationships. Unsolicited teaching, consulting, and engineering options keep popping up, and are making it difficult to select a path (because so many are interesting). The money for most of them is better than expected.
If you know you want to be a chemical…or mechanical…or petroleum…or whatever engineer, then I would suggest a bigger school is a better option. If you A) know you want to go to graduate school, and/or B) aren’t sure the type of engineering you like (or even if Engineering is for you), then a school like Mudd or Swat might be a great option.
All Engineering grads spend senior year on a thesis (E90), which is presented at year end. The entire graduating class (plus friends, roommates, etc.) sits through everyone’s presentations over 2 days. Everyone. They know each other, and help others with projects that are diverse. Here is a link to the presentation schedule this spring.
It’s not for everyone, but it has been a great experience for my engineering grad.
“Fortunately, there exist what I feel is the holy grail in engineering, schools with good toys, complete curricula, smaller classes, irrespective of the overall university size, and little use of TAs. Lehigh, Rose-Hulman, HMC, WPI, Case, RPI, and Cal Poly are all strong examples.”
It may depend on definition of large class sizes, but Case, RPI, Cal Poly have large (like a few hundred for the lecture) in freshman classes and use TAs for the problem set classes, which are much smaller.
Hey @EyeVeee maybe I’ll see you in 7 days when my kiddo graduates Swat (CS and Engineering) 
And I was a Swat engineering grad back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I did just fine And kiddo’s doing just great also.
Thank you all for all of these very helpful responses! I apologize for my lack of participation in my own thread, I was away at a rowing competition. All of the universities and colleges talked about are great and I will definitely look into them and see if I can visit them. When I said “liberal arts style” I was talking about the focus on undergrads. I just don’t want to get lost in the crowd in a large research university. Many of the posters seem to have hit the nail on the head with their recommendations. Thanks again!
@theloniusmonk, my son is a student at Cal Poly, now a masters candidate in ME. He has never had a TA for lab or discussion, ever. He has had two classes of 200, Materials I and II, both taught in the only lecture hall on campus that holds 200 students, The Silo in the business school. All of the rest of his classes from first year until now have been small. By that I mean under 50, most hovering in the 20-30 range. That includes Calculus and Physics.
I believe CO School of Mines (and its counterparts in SD, etc.) was mentioned a while back, but want to reiterate that these are also strong, small, undergrad-focused programs that are not exclusively focused on “Mines” as the name would imply - definitely worth a look.
Cornell College (IA) graduated it’s first class of engineering (BSE) majors this year. Not on the ABET list yet unfortunately…but is one of the CTCL.