Mechanical Engineering is of the hottest bachelor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #17 most popular major 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 4 schools in North Carolina 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 615 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
The me bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality me 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
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 many resources a school devotes to mechanical engineering students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other mechanical engineering students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
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 much debt mechanical 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 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.
The me school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Mechanical Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in North Carolina.
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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It's hard to beat Duke University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. Located in the city of Durham, Duke is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Those mechanical engineering students who get their bachelor's degree from Duke University receive $14,820 more than the typical me grad.
It's hard to beat North Carolina State University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. NC State is a very large public university located in the city of Raleigh.
After graduating, me bachelor's recipients usually make around $69,078 at the beginning of their careers.
Any student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering has to take a look at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Located in the city of Charlotte, UNC Charlotte is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the me program make an average of $69,178 for their early career.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering has to take a look at North Carolina A & T State University. NC A&T is a fairly large public university located in the city of Greensboro.
Soon after graduation, me bachelor's recipients generally make an average of $72,278 in the first five years of their career.
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 me bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality me program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
