Best Engineering Schools in Massachusetts

This article features top engineering colleges in Massachusetts that offer master and doctoral degrees in the fields of biological engineering, chemical engineering, computer science, materials engineering, mechanical engineering, etc. Please be informed that each school receives national wide rank as the ranking compares all engineering schools in the United States. Some important ranking factors include average GRE scores, alumni surveys, current student interviews, institutional research publications, and peer college assessment. In the following list of best engineering schools in the state of Massachusetts, you can see tuition cost for both in-state and out-of-state students, acceptable rates and admissions statistics for each top ranked engineering college.

Best Engineering Schools in Massachusetts

National Ranking Massachusetts Top Engineering Programs
1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)
Overall acceptance rate: 17.5%
Average GRE quantitative score (master’s and Ph.D. students): 783
Tuition: Full-time: $40,460 per year
Total graduate engineering enrollment: 2,818
Research expenditures per faculty member: $900,981
Engineering school research expenditures (2010-2011 fiscal year): $332,462,000
Faculty membership in National Academy of Engineering: 13.2%
19 Harvard University (Cambridge, MA)
Overall acceptance rate: 7.0%
Average GRE quantitative score (master’s and Ph.D. students): 787
Tuition: Full-time: $36,304 per year
Total graduate engineering enrollment: 385
Research expenditures per faculty member: $775,287
Engineering school research expenditures (2010-2011 fiscal year): $49,618,395
Faculty membership in National Academy of Engineering: 18.2%
38 Boston University (Boston, MA)
Overall acceptance rate: 25.3%
Average GRE quantitative score (master’s and Ph.D. students): 763
Tuition: Full-time: $40,848 per year
Total graduate engineering enrollment: 798
Research expenditures per faculty member: $633,610
Engineering school research expenditures (2010-2011 fiscal year): $74,766,086
Faculty membership in National Academy of Engineering: 6.0%
59 University of Massachusetts–Amherst (Amherst, MA)
Overall acceptance rate: 28.7%
Average GRE quantitative score (master’s and Ph.D. students): 754
Tuition: In-state, full-time: $2,640 per year, Out-of-state, full-time: $9,937 per year
Total graduate engineering enrollment: 825
Research expenditures per faculty member: $359,371
Engineering school research expenditures (2010-2011 fiscal year): $53,546,355
Faculty membership in National Academy of Engineering: 0.7%
62 Northeastern University (Boston, MA)
Overall acceptance rate: 46.7%
Average GRE quantitative score (master’s and Ph.D. students): 753
Tuition: Full-time: $1,230 per credit
Total graduate engineering enrollment: 1,893
Research expenditures per faculty member: $227,292
Engineering school research expenditures (2010-2011 fiscal year): $31,366,373
Faculty membership in National Academy of Engineering: 1.4%
76 Tufts University (Medford, MA)
Overall acceptance rate: 44.0%
Average GRE quantitative score (master’s and Ph.D. students): 742
Tuition: Full-time: $25,410 per year
Total graduate engineering enrollment: 628
Research expenditures per faculty member: $262,859
Engineering school research expenditures (2010-2011 fiscal year): $18,137,276
Faculty membership in National Academy of Engineering: 2.8%
100 Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Worcester, MA)
Overall acceptance rate: 58.0%
Average GRE quantitative score (master’s and Ph.D. students): 757
Tuition: Full-time: $21,564 per year
Total graduate engineering enrollment: 992
Research expenditures per faculty member: $127,640
Engineering school research expenditures (2010-2011 fiscal year): $13,785,220
Faculty membership in National Academy of Engineering: 0.9%
181 University of Massachusetts–Dartmouth (North Dartmouth, MA)
Overall acceptance rate: 77.5%
Average GRE quantitative score (master’s and Ph.D. students): 698
Tuition: In-state, full-time: $12,381 per year, Out-of-state, full-time: $21,952 per year
Total graduate engineering enrollment: 238
Research expenditures per faculty member: $61,865
Engineering school research expenditures (2010-2011 fiscal year): $2,660,231
Faculty membership in National Academy of Engineering: 0.0%
182 University of Massachusetts–Lowell (Francis) (Lowell, MA)
Overall acceptance rate: 65.2%
Average GRE quantitative score (master’s and Ph.D. students): 692
Tuition: In-state, full-time: $10,704 per year, Out-of-state, full-time: $19,804 per year
Total graduate engineering enrollment: 524
Research expenditures per faculty member: $155,512
Engineering school research expenditures (2010-2011 fiscal year): $11,352,424
Faculty membership in National Academy of Engineering: 0.0%

Boston, Massachusetts Recent History

On November 9, 1872, the Great Fire began in Boston. Starting in the basement of a trading warehouse, it was stopped only by noon the next day. Thirteen people died in the fire, seven hundred and seventy-six buildings in the central part of the city were damaged by fire, losses amounted to tens of millions of dollars. Nevertheless, the fire-damaged areas of Boston were very quickly (less than two years) restored, and the “forced” reconstruction made it possible to significantly improve urban development. The “Great Fire” in Boston is considered one of the largest urban fires in US history.

In the second half of the 19th century, Boston became the largest center of culture and education in the United States of America (which was greatly facilitated by the “Boston Brahmins”). Many famous writers and philosophers lived and worked here, numerous theaters, museums and universities were opened. But later, from the end of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century, Boston “became famous” for the most severe censorship established by local authorities. City officials felt it was their duty to ban anything they considered immoral or obscene. In Boston, books, plays, and movies were banned. The phrase “forbidden in Boston” became a household word in the United States and meant something unpleasant, dirty, sexy and spoiled.

On September 1, 1897, the first subway line in the United States opened in the ever-growing Boston.

On January 15, 1919, a man-made disaster occurred in Boston – urban areas were flooded with molasses. At a large alcohol production plant, a huge (twenty-seven meters in diameter and fifteen in height) reservoir with more than ten thousand tons of molasses (molasses), which was used as raw material, suddenly collapsed. A wave of molasses up to eight meters high poured into urban areas, its speed exceeded fifty-five kilometers per hour, it demolished houses and mangled the steel structures of flyovers. Twenty-one people died and about one hundred and fifty were injured due to the accident. It took more than six months to clean up the spilled molasses. For decades, Boston residents have said that the city smells of molasses on hot summer days.

In the 1920s and 1950s, Boston’s economy went through a period of decline. The main reasons for this were the Great Depression that swept the country and the movement of industrial enterprises to regions with cheaper labor (primarily the US South). As a result, the standard of living of the population of Boston has decreased. In an attempt to change the situation for the better, the city authorities began a program of rebuilding the city, during which some historical districts were destroyed.

It was only in the 1960s and 1970s, when the growth of precisely those sectors of the economy in which Boston was traditionally strong (finance, education, medicine) began to grow in the United States, that grief began to develop again. The reconstruction and restructuring of urban areas continued, and the transport infrastructure of Boston developed. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Boston experienced a building boom, especially in the city’s financial district.

Modern Boston is the intellectual, technological and political center of New England and one of the largest cities in the United States.