If you pursue a associate degree in general engineering, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #29 most popular program in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
College Factual reviewed 5 schools in Virginia to determine which ones were the best for associate degree seekers in the field of general engineering. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 463 associate degrees in general engineering during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great General Engineering School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of general engineering for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality engineering 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 take this into account we consider a college'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.
Average Early-Career Salaries
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their associate degree from the school. After all, your associate 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 many resources a school devotes to general engineering students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of general engineering students who choose to seek a associate 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 general engineering to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized general engineering related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for general engineering students working on their associate degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best General Engineering Associate Degree Schools in Virginia list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Northern Virginia Community College is one of the best schools in the country for getting an associate degree in general engineering. Northern Virginia Community College is a fairly large public college located in the suburb of Annandale.
Associate students who receive their degree from the engineering program earn around $16,790 for their early career.
Tidewater Community College is one of the best schools in the United States for getting an associate degree in general engineering. Located in the city of Norfolk, Tidewater Community College is a public college with a fairly large student population.
Associate recipients from the general engineering program at Tidewater Community College earn $25,883 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).