I am sure there was a thread over the years wondering about UA’s low ranking with US News.
This year they have the same ranking as Baylor University for engineering. My son toured Baylor a couple of years ago; and they do not have the depth, facilities, or student population of UA. Why are they ranked the same? Is there something we are missing?
Two words…peer ranking. US News weights a lot of its ranking on what other schools think of you. Well…it’s Alabama, what would you expect?
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It is based on peer rankings. This is influenced by research funding, and other factors that have little to do (directly) with the undergraduate experience.
UA has recent spent a significant amount on building up it’s engineering program, but it still lags in research and graduate students. As an undergraduate, UA can be a nice choice. However, UA still has to work on building up it’s research/graduate program.
You should look at “student outcome” type data.
For example, you can check out the info provided by UA on student outcomes. This is based on the graduation survey results. Other schools also published this information. At the bottom of the screen, you can select the College of Engineering in the drop down menu. On the 2nd page, you can select a major, for example, Aerospace Engineering. Then see the average starting salaries and where they are employed.
Career Outcomes - Career Center
You can also use LinkedIn to pull up the University of Alabama (or another school) and then select Alumni. Then you can select engineers and see what companies they work for and in what part of the country.
Good Luck!
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