If you pursue a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #35 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 5 schools in Washington to determine which ones were the best for civil engineering students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 272 bachelor's degrees in civil engineering to qualified students.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Urban Planning (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Urban Planning (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Urban Planning (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Urban Planning (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Science & Engineering Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Diploma Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Science & Engineering Diploma Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 0
DEBUG: No relevant offers, showing generic ESYOH widget
Choosing a Great Civil Engineering School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The civil eng bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality civil eng program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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 include a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to civil engineering students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other civil engineering students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
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 much debt civil engineering students go into to obtain their bachelor's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized civil engineering related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for civil engineering students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Civil Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in Washington list, to help you choose the best school for you.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "engineering//civil-engineering"
University of Washington - Seattle Campus is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. UW Seattle is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Seattle.
Soon after graduating, civil eng bachelor's recipients generally earn an average of $73,357 at the beginning of their careers.
Washington State University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. Wazzu is a fairly large public university located in the distant town of Pullman.
Civil Engineering bachelor's degree recipients from Washington State University receive an earnings boost of approximately $2,064 above the typical income of civil engineering graduates.
Any student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in civil engineering has to take a look at Gonzaga University. Gonzaga is a medium-sized private not-for-profit university located in the medium-sized city of Spokane.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the civil eng program earn around $74,355 in the first couple years of their career.
Seattle University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. Located in the large city of Seattle, Seattle U is a private not-for-profit university with a medium-sized student population.
After graduating, civil eng bachelor's recipients generally earn around $69,151 in their early careers.
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).
The civil eng bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality civil eng program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
