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 7 schools in Illinois to determine which ones were the best for civil engineering students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 449 bachelor's degrees in civil engineering during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Civil Engineering School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of civil engineering for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on civil engineering students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of civil engineering students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How easy is it for civil 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 civil engineering related body.
Our full 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 Illinois 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.
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. Located in the small city of Champaign, UIUC is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the civil engineering program at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign get $3,469 more than the typical college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Illinois Institute of Technology is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. Located in the city of Chicago, Illinois Tech is a private not-for-profit school with a medium-sized student population.
Soon after graduating, civil eng bachelor's recipients typically earn about $71,760 at the beginning of their careers.
University of Illinois at Chicago is a good choice for students interested in a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. UIC is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Chicago.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the civil eng program make around $69,310 in the first couple years of their career.
Located in the midsize city of Peoria, Bradley is a private not-for-profit university with a medium-sized student population.
Civil Engineering bachelor's degree recipients from Bradley University earn a boost of approximately $2,645 over the typical income of civil engineering graduates.
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 civil engineering for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
