Editorial Methodology

We currently list 320 online engineering programs at 55 universities, 115 of them stated by the school to require no physical attendance and 30 matched to a current accreditation in ABET's database. We also record 219 related offerings we checked and did not list (campus-only degrees, certificates, engineering management and systems engineering degrees, professional doctorates and others), shown on each school page with the reason. Coverage is partial and growing; a program missing from the directory has not been verified yet.

Which programs are eligible

The awarded degree and the official program identity decide; the department name does not. We display the complete official title. When the evidence is ambiguous — for example a program listed on a university-wide online page but not described as online on its own page — it goes to editorial review and is not published until an editor decides, with the reason recorded.

Major, award and program type

• Degree level and award — bachelor's, master's or PhD, with the exact award (BSE, MS, MEng, PhD…). Master's programs are also classified as MS or MEng where the award says so.
• Major — one or more of the 22 majors, taken from the official title or a formally named concentration. Related titles are mapped only after checking the curriculum and department (Electrical and Computer Engineering → electrical and computer; Materials Science and Engineering → materials).
• Program type — a dedicated degree in the discipline, or a concentration within a broad engineering award. A concentration is never presented as a separately awarded discipline degree; the broad award is stored and shown. One program can belong to several majors without being duplicated.
• Classification — engineering, or Engineering Technology (a related classification shown separately and never used to fill an engineering major).

Coursework delivery, online scope and physical attendance

Coursework delivery is online or hybrid. Online scope records whether the whole degree can be completed through the online pathway, or only the upper-division courses, or part of it. Physical attendance is a separate fact: none required (stated), limited campus visits, in-person labs, residency, in-person research, other requirements, or not verified. Each in-person requirement — orientations, lab sessions, residencies, proctored exams at a center, qualifying exams, dissertation defenses — is listed with its own quote.

“Fully online” appears only when the university states that no physical attendance is required, the whole degree is available through the online pathway, and no required in-person item is recorded. We never infer that an online PhD has no residency or campus research requirement. When attendance details are unknown the program says so; it never receives a Fully Online badge by default.

Laboratory arrangements (remote labs, lab kits, virtual labs, simulations, in-person or summer lab sessions), practical requirements (capstones, design projects, internships, co-ops) and research requirements (research areas, advisor, proposal, residency, research location, approved workplace research, qualifying exam, dissertation) are recorded separately, each with its source.

Bachelor's entry routes

Bachelor's programs record first-year, transfer, degree-completion and second-bachelor's routes as published, with required prior credits, associate-degree requirements and courses that must be completed elsewhere. A degree-completion program is never presented as a four-year first-entry program, and an upper-division-only online pathway is labelled prominently.

Accreditation

Institutional accreditation (the university as a whole) comes from the Department of Education's DAPIP database; a university is listed only with current institutional accreditation by a recognized accreditor. ABET accreditation belongs to individual programs. We take it from ABET's public accredited-program database and attach a record to a listed program only when the institution, program title and degree level match, with the commission (EAC, ETAC, CAC), dates, the campuses ABET lists and ABET's delivery characteristic. The online pathway counts as covered only when ABET's record lists an online location or delivery of all content at a distance. A university page that mentions ABET without a matching record does not create an accreditation label. An undergraduate program's accreditation is never applied to a master's or PhD, Engineering Technology accreditation is never labelled engineering accreditation, and graduate programs without ABET accreditation are not treated as inferior. See ABET accreditation explained.

Licensure

Professional Engineer licensure is decided by each state's engineering board, usually on education (often an EAC/ABET-accredited engineering degree), the FE exam, experience and the PE exam. We show the university's own licensure disclosures where published and never say that a program qualifies you for a license. The state where you will be licensed — not the school's state — decides. See engineering licensure and online degrees.

Tuition

Tuition is recorded exactly as published: amount in USD, basis (per credit, per course, per term, per academic year or whole program), student category (resident, nonresident, online, international or all students), academic year when printed, and whether it comes from the program's own page, an official online tuition table or a university-wide table. Figures on different bases are never compared to call one program cheaper. An estimated total tuition is calculated only as published per-credit rate × published required credits (or taken from a published whole-program figure), on one consistent residency basis, with fees excluded — see the affordability method. Distance, engineering, lab, equipment and proctoring fees are listed separately when published. Missing tuition is shown as not published, never as zero.

Deadlines

Each deadline belongs to an intake (for example Fall 2027) and, where the university distinguishes them, to domestic or international applicants. A date is stored as a date only when the year is printed with it; otherwise the printed wording is shown. Past deadlines are marked as passed and are never rolled forward into a new cycle. Rolling admission is shown only when the university says so.

Admissions and tests

Requirements are shown with their published status — required, optional, recommended, not required or waived — including prior degree, GPA, mathematics, science and engineering prerequisites, programming, bridge courses, references and English-language tests. Missing GRE information is shown as not verified; it never means “no GRE”. We do not publish acceptance rates or estimate admission chances.

Funding

Doctoral funding has a classification backed by sourced facts: guaranteed, conditional, competitive full, tuition only, partial, or not verified, plus whether the university states that distance students are eligible. Campus assistantships are not assumed to apply to distance students. Loans are never shown as scholarships.

Sources and verification

Every fact carries the URL of the university page it came from and a verbatim quote. Before publication a script re-fetches each page and searches for the quote; a fact whose quote is not found is stored but never shown. Only the university's own domains (and catalog systems the university runs) count as official sources — never another directory, ranking or lead-generation site. Institutional identity comes from IPEDS, institutional accreditation from DAPIP and program accreditation from ABET. Details on the data sources page.

Pages behind bot protection are not bypassed; when an official page cannot be read, the fact stays unverified and the gap is recorded. Each profile shows its last verification date; records past their academic year are flagged for review rather than silently kept.

Independence and advertising

Listing is free. Paid placements are labelled “Sponsored”, appear in their own section, and only where the sponsored program already matches the page's results. Sponsorship never changes what we list, how a program is described, its verified status, its accreditation information, or our editorial selections. See the sponsorship disclosure and the rankings methodology.

What we do not claim

• No licensure eligibility determinations: we report what universities publish.
• No salaries, employment, pass or graduation rates for programs, and no implied graduate outcomes.
• No student reviews, ratings or testimonials.
• No partnerships with the universities listed or with ABET, and no application processing.
• No guarantee that a program will admit you, fund you, or enroll students from your state.
• Not finding a program in our research is not proof that none exists.

Found something out of date? Suggest an update with an official source.