Systems Engineering isn't the most popular bachelor's program in the world, but it's not the least popular either. To be more precise it ranks #179 in popularity out of 363 majors in the country. So, it might take a little more work to find colleges and universities that offer the degree program.
College Factual looked at 2 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Systems Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 100 bachelor's degrees in systems engineering during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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
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 systems engineering students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of systems 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 systems 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 systems engineering related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for systems engineering students working on their bachelor's degree.
The systems engineering 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 Systems Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region.
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 is difficult to beat University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in systems engineering. UIUC is a very large public university located in the small city of Champaign.
Bachelor's recipients from the systems engineering degree program at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign earn $9,271 above the typical college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Otterbein University is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in systems engineering. Otterbein is a small private not-for-profit university located in the large suburb of Westerville.
After graduating, systems engineering bachelor's recipients usually make around $63,243 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).
