The U.S. News Short List, separate from our overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas. Be sure to explore The Short List: College and The Short List: Grad School to find data that matter to you in your college or graduate school search.
As online learning continues to become more common in higher education, many students who want this kind of experience may have to get used to rejection.
Several online engineering schools, for example, accept less than half of applicants. At the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering, 36.6 percent of online graduate engineering applicants were accepted between July 2013 and June 2014. It had the lowest acceptance rate among the 59 ranked online graduate engineering programs that submitted data to U.S. News.
The school accepted 44.4 percent of applicants between July 2012 and June 2013, making it the third most selective online engineering school during that time.
[Get accepted to a top online engineering master’s program.]
Other schools, such as Florida International University and Western New England University, are new to the list of 10 most competitive online graduate engineering schools. The Florida school accepted 54.3 percent of applicants and Western New England took 45.5 percent between July 2013 and June 2014.
One institution on the list recently increased the percentage of students it accepted, but not by much. University of Illinois–Chicago accepted 33.9 percent of students in between July 2012 and June 2013. A year later, it accepted 37.8 percent of students.
[Consider overlooked engineering fields that pay well.]
The least competitive online graduate engineering programs were Norwich University, Rowan University, the University of Arizona and the University of Toledo. All of these schools accepted 100 percent of applicants.
Below is a list of the 10 schools with the lowest acceptance rates for online graduate engineering programs between July 2013 and June 2014. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.
| School (name) (state) | Acceptance rate | U.S. news rank |
|---|---|---|
| University of Southern California (Viterbi) | 36.6% | 3 |
| University of Illinois–Chicago | 37.8% | 29 (tie) |
| University of California–Los Angeles (Samueli) | 44.6% | 1 |
| Western New England University (MA) | 45.5% | 45 (tie) |
| Virginia Tech | 46.2% | 15 |
| Texas Tech University (Whitacre) | 46.8% | 20 (tie) |
| Columbia University (Fu Foundation) (NY) | 50% | 2 |
| Michigan Technological University | 52.2% | 40 (tie) |
| Florida International University | 54.3% | 53 (tie) |
| University of Washington | 55.6% | 26 |
School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.
U.S. News surveyed 80 colleges and universities for our 2014 survey of online master’s degree programs in engineering. Schools self-reported myriad data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News’ data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Online Programs rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News’ rankings of Best Online Programs. The acceptance rate data above are correct as of Jan. 20, 2015.
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10 Online Graduate Engineering Programs Where Few Get In originally appeared on usnews.com
