Picking out a college is difficult, but picking out a college that focuses on manufacturing and engineering is harder.

There are few schools that offer high-quality schooling and training for a future in high-tech manufacturing careers—but the schools that do often offer higher degrees in engineering as well.

While there are many options for students interested in a career in manufacturing that don’t involve a four-year degree, there are still plenty of situations where a student may choose to get a college degree before entering the workforce. And in those cases, we thought we’d provide a brief list of 5 great colleges that offer studies in engineering:

• Georgia Institute of Technology
  A public research university in Atlanta, the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) was built around the idea of building an industrial economy after the Civil War. Now, Georgia Tech has thirty-one departments, all of which are focused in science and technology. The institution has three main colleges and the biggest is the College of Engineering, which many ranking bodies say tops the list for engineering programs.
• University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
  University of Michigan is another public research center that offers undergraduate and doctoral degrees in many fields including technology and engineering. The College of Engineering at the U of M is listed as one of the premier engineering schools. To bring in students, as well as educate younger children, the College of Engineering puts on a “Tech Day,” which invites high school and prospective transfer students to the college to talk to current students and faculty about engineering and high-tech manufacturing.
• University of California, Berkeley
  University of California-Berkeley is a top ranked university that co-manages three The most popular major on campus is Electrical Engineering. One notable project created by the university’s College of Engineering was SPICE–Stimulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis, which is a powerful program that can predict circuit behavior.
• Stanford University
  During the beginning of Stanford’s ‘research park,’ the dean of the school encouraged students, graduates, and even parents to start up their own companies. Some high-tech firms that started up around this time were (HP) and . Today, the university continues to push its students to become a part of the high-tech industry.
• Texas A&M University
  Texas A&M is ranked among the top 20 in research in terms of funding and contributions to the field of engineering. For the past few years, the has had the largest enrollment of the university with twenty percent. The College of Engineering also maintains responsibility for three independent agencies– the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service, and Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

Bonus: University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The University of Nebraska at Lincoln is the cultural and intellectual center for engineering in the state of Nebraska. The College of Engineering offers the students comprehensive engineering, technology, and manufacturing programs.

Each of these schools has a willingness to engage their students to help further their education in engineering, which can lead to great high-tech manufacturing jobs.

Although we know that a college degree isn’t always necessary for success in manufacturing, for those hoping to pursue a college degree, it would be hard to go wrong with any of these schools.

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