2022 Best Value Materials Engineering Schools for a Bachelor’s in Illinois

When pursuing a degree in today’s world, students have many different options to choose from. College Factual has developed its “Best Value Materials Engineering Schools for a Bachelor’s in Illinois” ranking as one item you can use to help make this decision.

In 2019-2020, 3,485 people earned their degree in materials engineering, making the major the 150th most popular in the United States. In 2017-2018, materials engineering graduates who were awarded their degree in 2015-2017, earned an average of $63,129 and had an average of $23,918 in loans still to pay off.

Across Illinois, there were 213 materials engineering graduates with average earnings and debt of $62,200 and $19,750 respectively. At the bachelor’s degree level specifically, there were 106 materials engineering graduates with average earnings and debt of $38,319 and $24,183 respectively.

For this year’s “Best Value Materials Engineering Schools for a Bachelor’s in Illinois” ranking, we looked at 3 colleges that offer a degree in materials engineering. Not only do the schools that top this list have excellent materials engineering programs, but they also cost less that schools of similar quality.

To come up with these rankings, we looked at factors such as the cost to attend the school after aid is awarded and overall quality of the materials engineering program at the school. Check out our ranking methodology for more information.

More Ways to Rank Materials Engineering Schools

Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we’ve developed the “Best Value Materials Engineering Schools for a Bachelor’s in Illinois” ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.

One of our other unique offerings is College Combat. This tool lets you build your own customized comparisons utilizing the factors that are most important to you. If you’re torn between two schools, you can use it to help you see how they stack up against one another. Bookmark it so you can compare any new schools that might interest you.

Best Value Materials Engineering Schools for a Bachelor’s in Illinois

The following schools top our list of the Best Best Value Materials Engineering Schools for a Bachelor’s in Illinois.

Top 3 Best Value Bachelor’s Degree Colleges for Materials Engineering in Illinois

#1

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Champaign, Illinois

#2 in overall quality

$15,880 Average Net Price

$68,499 Average Early-Career Earnings

You’ll be in good company if you decide to attend University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It ranked #1 on our 2022 Best Value Materials Engineering Schools for a Bachelor’s in Illinois list. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a large school located in Champaign, Illinois that handed out 87 bachelors’s materials engineering degrees in 2019-2020.

As a testament to the quality of education offered at UIUC, the school also landed the #2 spot in our “Best Materials Engineering Bachelor’s Degree Schools in Illinois” ranking. The yearly cost to attend University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is $15,880 for illinois bachelor’s degree materials engineering students.

With a freshman retention rate of 94%, the school does an excellent job of retaining its students. The school has an impressive student loan default rate. It’s only 2.4%, which is much lower than the national rate of 10.1%.

Read full report on Materials Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

#2

Illinois Institute of Technology

Chicago, Illinois

#3 in overall quality

$22,831 Average Net Price

Out of the 3 schools in the Best Value Materials Engineering Schools for a Bachelor’s in Illinois that were part of this year’s ranking, Illinois Institute of Technology landed the #2 spot on the list. Illinois Institute of Technology is a medium-sized private not-for-profit school situated in Chicago, Illinois. It awarded 5 bachelors’s materials engineering degrees in 2019-2020.

Illinois Tech did well in our major quality rankings, too. It placed #3 on our “Best Materials Engineering Bachelor’s Degree Schools in Illinois” list. The yearly cost to attend Illinois Tech is $22,831 for illinois bachelor’s degree materials engineering students.

Students who start out at the school are likely to stick around. The freshman retention rate is 87%. The school has an impressive student loan default rate. It’s only 2.9%, which is much lower than the national rate of 10.1%. The impressive student-to-faculty ratio of 10 to 1 means that students may have more opportunities to work more closely with their professors than they would at other schools.

Read more about Materials Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology

#3

Northwestern University

Evanston, Illinois

#1 in overall quality

$24,664 Average Net Price

$73,635 Average Early-Career Earnings

You’ll be in good company if you decide to attend Northwestern University. It ranked #3 on our 2022 Best Value Materials Engineering Schools for a Bachelor’s in Illinois list. Located in Evanston, Illinois, this large private not-for-profit school awarded 14 degrees to qualified bachelors’s materials engineering students in 2019-2020.

Northwestern did well in our major quality rankings, too. It placed #1 on our “Best Materials Engineering Bachelor’s Degree Schools in Illinois” list. It costs about $24,664 for Illinois Bachelor’s Degree Materials Engineering students per year to attend Northwestern University.

The student loan default rate at the school is 0.8%, which is quite low when compared to the national default rate of 10.1%. The school has an excellent freshman retention rate of 97%, which means students like the school well enough to return for a second year. The student-to-faculty ratio of 6 to 1 is a sign that students will have more opportunities to engage with their professors one-on-one.

Full Northwestern University Materials Engineering Report

• Best Value Bachelor’s Degree Colleges for Materials Engineering in the Great Lakes Region
• Best Value Bachelor’s Degree Colleges for Materials Engineering

Notes and References

References

• 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 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).
• Information about the national average student loan default rate is from the U.S. Department of Education and refers to data about the 2016 borrower cohort tracking period for which the cohort default rate (CDR) was 10.1%.

Read more about our data sources and methodologies

Footnotes

• *Average salary, average net price, and average tuition and fees are for the top schools only.
• Some schools otherwise deserving of recognition may have been removed from this ranking in the event that new data identified post-publication warranted it, or at the request of the school.

Credits

• Credit for the banner image above goes to Panoramedia.

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