Engineering isn't the most popular associate program in the world, but it's not the least popular either. To be more precise it ranks #20 in popularity out of 38 majors in the country. So, you may have to do some digging around to find quality schools that offer the degree program. This list can help with that.
College Factual looked at 4 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Engineering Associate Degree Schools in Virginia ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 463 associate degrees in engineering during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Engineering School for Your Associate Degree
The engineering associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. 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 combination 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 engineering students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other engineering students want to attend this school to pursue a associate 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 easy is it for 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 engineering related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for 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 Engineering Associate Degree Schools in Virginia list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
The engineering associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. 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:
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