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Resistance Is Futile

Computer Engineering

FPGA Whisperers & Bit-Twiddling Demigods

The absolute pinnacle of Computer Engineering. They read x86 assembly for fun and dream in Verilog. If your smart toaster achieves sentience and takes over the grid, a graduate from one of these programs probably wrote its kernel scheduler.

# ▲ University Location Degrees Accept SAT Male/Female Intl Earnings ROI Employ
1 MIT
Cambridge, MA
Cambridge, MA — 5% — — — — — —
2 Stanford
Palo Alto, CA
Palo Alto, CA — 4% — — — — — —
3 U. of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
Berkeley, CA 0 11% — — — 100 — —
4 U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, IL
Champaign, IL 458 37% 85% / 15% 31% $137,261 100 98% —
5 Georgia Tech
Atlanta, GA
Atlanta, GA 132 13% 86% / 14% 17% $131,437 100 98% —
6 Carnegie Mellon
Pittsburgh, PA
Pittsburgh, PA 247 11% 58% / 42% 26% $185,819 100 99% —
7 U. of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, MI
Ann Arbor, MI 131 16% 79% / 21% 27% $122,499 98 96% —
8 Cornell
Ithaca, NY
Ithaca, NY — 8% — — — — — —
9 U. of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX
Austin, TX — 22% — — — — — —
10 Purdue
West Lafayette, IN
West Lafayette, IN 455 43% 85% / 15% 21% $120,254 99 97% —

Segfault Survivors & Kernel Panickers

Giant public powerhouses where the hardware labs look like e-waste hoarding situations. They pump out enough battle-hardened code monkeys to single-handedly staff every cloud infrastructure team and semiconductor fab on Earth. They survive on pure caffeine and unresolved memory leaks.

# ▲ University Location Degrees Accept SAT Male/Female Intl Earnings ROI Employ
1 U. of Washington
Seattle, WA
Seattle, WA 239 42% 75% / 25% 15% $135,812 100 95% —
2 UCLA
Los Angeles, CA
Los Angeles, CA 87 9% 86% / 14% 10% $169,159 100 93% —
3 U. of California, San Diego
La Jolla, CA
La Jolla, CA 208 29% 84% / 16% 22% $137,401 100 97% —
4 U. of California, Davis
Davis, CA
Davis, CA 102 46% 73% / 27% 18% $133,509 100 97% —
5 U. of Wisconsin - Madison
Madison, WI
Madison, WI 82 41% 84% / 16% 21% $148,618 100 98% —
6 U. of Maryland, College Park
College Park, MD
College Park, MD 93 45% 88% / 12% 5% $140,334 100 97% —
7 Texas A&M University - College Station
College Station, TX
College Station, TX 145 52% 86% / 14% 1% $125,068 99 99% —
8 North Carolina State
Raleigh, NC
Raleigh, NC 142 40% 84% / 16% 6% $113,535 99 95% —
9 U. of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA
Santa Barbara, CA 54 38% 80% / 20% 2% $126,189 99 94% —
10 Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA
Blacksburg, VA 208 55% 92% / 8% 10% $124,549 99 97% —
11 Ohio State
Columbus, OH
Columbus, OH — 49% — — — — — —
12 Pennsylvania State
University Park, PA
University Park, PA 93 55% 90% / 10% 23% $114,814 99 98% —
13 U. of Minnesota - Twin Cities
Minneapolis, MN
Minneapolis, MN 59 65% 88% / 12% 10% $100,707 97 93% —

O(1) Touch Grass (Theoretically Computable)

Elite research universities with real ECE muscle, but where CompE leans hard toward the theoretical and the silicon is somebody else's problem. They'll prove the time complexity of your scheduler before they'll touch a logic analyzer or admit they still can't exit Vim.

# ▲ University Location Degrees Accept SAT Male/Female Intl Earnings ROI Employ
1 Caltech
Pasadena, CA
Pasadena, CA — 4% — — — — — —
2 Princeton
Princeton, NJ
Princeton, NJ — 4% — — — — — —
3 Columbia
New York, NY
New York, NY 21 4% 52% / 48% 14% $177,537 100 100% —
4 U. of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA
Los Angeles, CA 53 11% 58% / 42% 21% $138,474 99 — —
5 U. of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia, PA 11 5% 82% / 18% 55% $155,827 100 — —
6 Northwestern
Evanston, IL
Evanston, IL 26 7% 92% / 8% 27% $137,434 99 96% —
7 Johns Hopkins
Baltimore, MD
Baltimore, MD 9 6% 56% / 44% 11% $132,967 99 — —
8 Rice
Houston, TX
Houston, TX — 8% — — — — — —
9 Duke
Durham, NC
Durham, NC 106 5% 77% / 23% 12% $179,140 100 98% —

Bricked Microcontroller Brigade

For Computer Engineering specifically, this might be the actual promised land: undergrad-obsessed, hands-on hardware shops where you don't graduate until you've bricked a dev board, hand-rolled a bootloader, and shipped a senior project that actually blinks. Cal Poly SLO (#1) and Rose-Hulman (#2) top the nation's undergrad-focused CompE rankings for a reason, and the service academies and tech institutes here forge the same solder-scarred, sleep-deprived breed. (Mudd's degree is technically 'general Engineering,' but nobody there is scared of a GPIO pin.)

# ▲ University Location Degrees Accept SAT Male/Female Intl Earnings ROI Employ
1 Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo, CA
San Luis Obispo, CA 89 30% 88% / 12% 0% $132,138 100 97% —
2 Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Terre Haute, IN
Terre Haute, IN 49 81% 86% / 14% 8% $128,256 99 98% —
3 Harvey Mudd
Claremont, CA
Claremont, CA — 12% — — — — — —
4 Olin College of Engineering
Needham, MA
Needham, MA — 8% — — — — — —
5 Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Worcester, MA
Worcester, MA — 62% — — — — — —
6 Santa Clara
Santa Clara, CA
Santa Clara, CA 109 48% 77% / 23% 5% $171,545 100 97% —
7 United States Naval Academy
Annapolis, MD
Annapolis, MD 10 9% 90% / 10% 10% $114,718 — — —
8 United States Military Academy
West Point, NY
West Point, NY — 12% — — — — — —
9 United States Air Force Academy
Usaf Academy, CO
Usaf Academy, CO — 12% — — — — — —
10 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY
Troy, NY — 63% — — — — — —
11 Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester, NY
Rochester, NY 91 71% 87% / 13% 5% $120,181 99 98% —
12 Illinois Institute of Technology
Chicago, IL
Chicago, IL 27 66% 85% / 15% 4% $102,019 95 96% —
13 Milwaukee School of Engineering
Milwaukee, WI
Milwaukee, WI 38 67% 82% / 18% 0% $103,008 95 95% —