Top Feeders to Engineering (Updated 2024)
No matter your intended area of study within the broader field of engineering (electrical, civil, mechanical, biomedical, etc.), many future engineers aspire to someday gain employment at one of the world鈥檚 premier firms.
One way to maximize your chances of achieving this goal is to attend an undergraduate institution with a proven track record of placing engineering graduates at the leading companies in this competitive sector. While the schools that sit atop most college ranking systems are, as you would expect, well-represented in this regard, there are also many more accessible universities that have sizable alumni networks and strong pipelines into the most coveted corporate destinations for engineers of all stripes.
To identify “top feeder” institutions in the engineering field, we relied on publicly available data from LinkedIn, a professional networking site featuring profiles of approximately 200 million workers across the United States. Specifically, we identified and analyzed the undergraduate backgrounds of nearly 25,000 entry-level engineers (with 0 to 5 years of work experience) across ten companies most frequently cited by engineering majors as the 鈥渕ost desirable to work for.鈥� They include Google, Microsoft, Apple, SpaceX, NASA, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, IBM, and General Motors. We then constructed two lists. The first list looks at the raw number of alumni employed by this select group. The second list looks at the top 30 producers when adjusted for undergraduate enrollment, which allows us to highlight schools that may be smaller in size, but that still send a significant number of graduates directly to these prestigious companies.
Finally, we identified the two top employers for each 鈥渇eeder鈥� institution. The first top employer is the company employing the most undergraduate alumni from a particular school. The second top employer is the company with the highest share of employees from that undergraduate school. For example, Georgia Tech’s first top employer is Microsoft, because more Tech (undergraduate) alumni work at Microsoft than at any of the other highlighted companies. Georgia Tech’s second top employer is Lockheed Martin because its graduates comprise a larger share of all employees at Lockheed Martin than they do at any other company in our analysis. If a school’s first and second top employer are the same, we indicate the company with the second highest share of employees instead. Measuring both total graduates employed and the institutional share of a company鈥檚 employees allows us to identify schools offering the best pipelines to smaller yet highly prestigious companies, such as SpaceX and NASA, which may draw heavily from one particular institution but wouldn’t otherwise make an institution’s list of top employers because of their relatively small size.
Top Feeders (Total Employed)
| Rank (Total) | Institution | # Employed | Top Employers (Total) | Top Employer (Share) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Georgia Institute of Technology | 330 | Microsoft | Lockheed Martin |
| 2 | Carnegie Mellon University | 321 | Apple | |
| 3 | University of Southern California | 299 | Apple | |
| 4 | University of California, Berkeley | 226 | Tesla | |
| 5 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 194 | Apple | |
| 6 | University of California, San Diego | 183 | Northrop Grumman | |
| 7 | Columbia University | 165 | Apple | |
| 7 | University of Washington | 165 | Microsoft | Boeing |
| 9 | Purdue University | 160 | Northrop Grumman | Lockheed Martin |
| 10 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor | 158 | SpaceX | |
| 11 | Texas A&M University | 155 | Lockheed Martin | SpaceX |
| 12 | University of Texas at Austin | 153 | NASA | |
| 13 | University of California, Los Angeles | 145 | Northrop Grumman | |
| 14 | Northeastern University | 143 | Microsoft | |
| 14 | University of Maryland | 143 | Northrop Grumman | NASA |
| 16 | University of California, Irvine | 141 | Northrop Grumman | |
| 17 | Cornell University | 122 | Lockheed Martin | |
| 18 | Penn State University | 107 | Lockheed Martin | Northrop Grumman |
| 19 | Stanford University | 102 | Apple | |
| 20 | University of Pennsylvania | 97 | Microsoft | |
| 21 | University of Florida | 93 | Microsoft | Lockheed Martin |
| 22 | Virginia Tech | 90 | Lockheed Martin | Northrop Grumman |
| 23 | Massachusetts Inst. of Technology | 88 | NASA | |
| 24 | University of Virginia | 85 | Microsoft | Northrop Grumman |
| 25 | Duke University | 81 | NASA | |
| 26 | North Carolina State University | 74 | Microsoft | Northrop Grumman |
| 27 | Ohio State University | 68 | SpaceX | |
| 28 | Rice University | 64 | SpaceX | |
| 29 | University of Wisconsin, Madison | 64 | Microsoft | General Motors |
| 30 | Brown University | 61 | SpaceX |
Top Feeders (Adjusted for Undergraduate Enrollment)
| Rank (Total) | Institution | # Employed | Top Employers (Total) | Top Employer (Share) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Carnegie Mellon University | 321 | Apple | |
| 2 | Columbia University | 165 | Apple | |
| 3 | Olin College of Engineering | 7 | Microsoft | |
| 4 | Massachusetts Inst. of Technology | 88 | NASA | |
| 5 | Georgia Institute of Technology | 330 | Microsoft | Lockheed Martin |
| 6 | Stanford University | 102 | Apple | |
| 7 | Rice University | 64 | SpaceX | |
| 8 | California Institute of Technology | 14 | Apple | |
| 9 | University of Southern California | 299 | Apple | |
| 10 | Duke University | 81 | NASA | |
| 11 | University of Pennsylvania | 97 | Microsoft | |
| 12 | Northeastern University | 143 | Microsoft | |
| 13 | Harvey Mudd College | 8 | Microsoft | |
| 14 | Rose Hulman Instittute of Technology | 18 | Northrop Grumman | |
| 15 | Brown University | 61 | SpaceX | |
| 16 | Cornell University | 122 | Lockheed Martin | |
| 17 | Princeton University | 38 | NASA | |
| 18 | University of California, Berkeley | 226 | Apple | |
| 19 | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | 41 | Lockheed Martin | |
| 20 | Yale University | 31 | SpaceX | |
| 21 | Santa Clara University | 36 | Microsoft | |
| 22 | Northwestern University | 51 | Northrop Grumman | |
| 23 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 194 | Apple | |
| 24 | University of California, San Diego | 183 | Northrop Grumman | |
| 25 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor | 158 | SpaceX | |
| 26 | Harvard University | 26 | Microsoft | |
| 27 | University of Virginia | 85 | Microsoft | Northrop Grumman |
| 28 | Johns Hopkins University | 31 | Northrop Grumman | |
| 29 | University of California, Irvine | 141 | Northrop Grumman | |
| 30 | Vanderbilt University | 33 | Microsoft |
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