a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #51 out of 363 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 17 schools in the Southwest Region to determine which ones were the best for chemical engineering students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,145 bachelor's degrees in chemical engineering during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Chemical Engineering School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of chemical engineering for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality chem eng program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on chemical engineering students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of chemical engineering students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How easy is it for chemical engineering to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized chemical engineering related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for chemical engineering students working on their bachelor's degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Chemical Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region list to help you make the college decision.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
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Texas A&M University - College Station is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. Texas A&M College Station is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized city of College Station.
Chemical Engineering bachelor's degree recipients from Texas A&M University - College Station get an earnings boost of around $12,360 over the average income of chemical engineering majors.
The University of Texas at Austin is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. UT Austin is a very large public university located in the large city of Austin.
Those chemical engineering students who get their bachelor's degree from The University of Texas at Austin receive $13,549 more than the standard chem eng graduate.
It is hard to beat Rice University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. Located in the large city of Houston, Rice is a private not-for-profit university with a medium-sized student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the chemical engineering major at Rice University get $14,014 above the typical college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering has to check out Arizona State University - Tempe. Located in the midsize city of Tempe, ASU - Tempe is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the chemical engineering major at Arizona State University - Tempe make $4,997 more than the average college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
UH is a very large public university located in the city of Houston.
Bachelor's recipients from the chemical engineering degree program at University of Houston earn $10,652 above the average graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Located in the town of Stillwater, OSU is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Chemical Engineering bachelor's degree recipients from Oklahoma State University - Main Campus receive an earnings boost of around $8,650 above the typical income of chemical engineering graduates.
University of Oklahoma is a fairly large public university located in the midsize suburb of Norman.
Chemical Engineering bachelor's degree recipients from University of Oklahoma Norman Campus earn a boost of around $3,935 over the average income of chemical engineering majors.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
Your choice of chemical engineering for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality chem eng program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
