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.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 27 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Civil Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,533 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
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 take this into account we include a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a host 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 colleges for civil engineering students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Civil Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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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Texas A&M University - College Station is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. Texas A&M College Station is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of College Station.
Bachelor's recipients from the civil engineering major at Texas A&M University - College Station earn $9,070 above the typical college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
The University of Texas at Austin is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. UT Austin is a fairly large public university located in the city of Austin.
Civil Engineering bachelor's degree recipients from The University of Texas at Austin earn a boost of around $8,430 over the typical income of civil engineering majors.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in civil engineering has to look into Texas Tech University. Located in the city of Lubbock, Texas Tech is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the civil engineering major at Texas Tech University make $7,932 above the typical college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Located in the medium-sized city of Tempe, ASU - Tempe is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the civil engineering program at Arizona State University - Tempe get $3,998 above the standard college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
University of Arizona is a fairly large public university located in the city of Tucson.
Civil Engineering bachelor's degree recipients from University of Arizona earn a boost of about $2,932 over the average earnings of civil engineering majors.
UH is a very large public university located in the large city of Houston.
Bachelor's recipients from the civil engineering major at University of Houston get $8,099 above the average college 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.
Bachelor's recipients from the civil engineering major at Oklahoma State University - Main Campus earn $4,453 more than the average graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
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.
