If you pursue a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #17 most popular program in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 21 schools in New York to determine which ones were the best for mechanical engineering students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,833 bachelor's degrees in mechanical engineering during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Mechanical Engineering School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of mechanical 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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their bachelor's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their bachelor's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on mechanical engineering students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of mechanical engineering students who choose to seek a bachelor's 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 mechanical 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 mechanical engineering related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for mechanical 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 Mechanical Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in New York ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
In addition to College Factual's rankings, you may want to take a look at College Combat, our unique tool that lets you pit your favorite schools head-to-head and compare how they rate on factors that most interest you.
When you have some time, check it out - you may want to bookmark the link so you don't forget it.
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Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering has to take a look at Cornell University. Located in the small city of Ithaca, Cornell is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Those mechanical engineering students who get their bachelor's degree from Cornell University earn $16,110 more than the standard me grad.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. Located in the city of Troy, RPI is a private not-for-profit school with a medium-sized student population.
Those mechanical engineering students who get their bachelor's degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute receive $4,503 more than the average me student.
Columbia University in the City of New York is a good choice for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. Columbia is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of New York.
Those mechanical engineering students who get their bachelor's degree from Columbia University in the City of New York make $2,706 more than the standard me graduate.
Clarkson University is a great choice for individuals interested in a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. Clarkson is a small private not-for-profit university located in the remote town of Potsdam.
Bachelor's recipients from the mechanical engineering major at Clarkson University get $3,838 more than the typical college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Located in the suburb of Rochester, RIT is a private not-for-profit school with a large student population.
Mechanical Engineering bachelor's degree recipients from Rochester Institute of Technology earn a boost of about $6,933 above the average income of mechanical engineering majors.
University of Rochester is a large private not-for-profit university located in the medium-sized city of Rochester.
Mechanical Engineering bachelor's degree recipients from University of Rochester earn a boost of approximately $4,498 above the average income of mechanical 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 mechanical 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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
