Electrical Engineering is of the hottest bachelor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #31 most popular major in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 41 schools in the Far Western US Region to determine which ones were the best for electrical engineering students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 3,142 bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering during the 2022-2023 academic year.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Electrical Engineering (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Electrical Engineering (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Electrical Engineering (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Electrical Engineering (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
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 = 2
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 2 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 2
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 2 offers with relevance >= 1.0
Choosing a Great Electrical Engineering School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The ee bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality ee 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
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.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on electrical engineering students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of electrical 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 electrical 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 electrical engineering related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for electrical 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 Electrical Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that 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.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "engineering//ee-electrical-engineering"
University of California - Berkeley is a great choice for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. UC Berkeley is a very large public university located in the midsize city of Berkeley.
Bachelor's recipients from the electrical engineering degree program at University of California - Berkeley get $59,089 above the typical graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering needs to take a look at University of California - San Diego. UCSD is a very large public university located in the city of La Jolla.
Electrical Engineering bachelor's degree recipients from University of California - San Diego earn a boost of about $2,481 above the average earnings of electrical engineering graduates.
University of California - Los Angeles is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. Located in the large city of Los Angeles, UCLA is a public university with a very large student population.
Those electrical engineering students who get their bachelor's degree from University of California - Los Angeles make $7,163 more than the average ee grad.
Located in the large city of Seattle, UW Seattle is a public university with a very large student population.
Those electrical engineering students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Washington - Seattle Campus receive $3,783 more than the standard ee grad.
Located in the small suburb of San Luis Obispo, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those electrical engineering students who get their bachelor's degree from California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo earn $12,370 more than the typical ee grad.
UC Irvine is a very large public university located in the city of Irvine.
Bachelor's recipients from the electrical engineering degree program at University of California - Irvine make $2,206 more than the average college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
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).