Top Feeders to Engineering
Updated July 2021
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’s 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 170 million workers across the United States. Specifically, we identified and analyzed the undergraduate backgrounds of more than 49,000 entry-level engineers (with 0 to 5 years of work experience) across 10 companies most frequently cited by engineering majors as the “most desirable to work for.” They include Amazon, Apple, Boeing, ExxonMobil, Google, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, NASA, SpaceX, and Tesla. 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 “feeder” 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, USC’s first top employer is Amazon, because more USC (undergraduate) alumni work at Amazon than at any of the other nine companies. USC’s second top employer is SpaceX because its graduates comprise a larger share of all employees at SpaceX 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’s employees allows us to identify schools offering the best pipelines to smaller yet highly prestigious companies, such as Space X 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 Feeder Rankings (by total employed)
Rank (Total) | Institution | # Employed | Top Employers (Total) | Top Employer (Share) |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | University of Southern California | 1,502 | Amazon | SpaceX |
2 | Carnegie Mellon University | 1,253 | Apple | |
3 | Georgia Institute of Technology | 1,205 | Amazon | SpaceX |
4 | University of Washington | 1,001 | Microsoft | Boeing |
5 | University of California, Berkeley | 991 | Apple | |
6 | University of California, San Diego | 863 | Amazon | Apple |
7 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 809 | Amazon | Apple |
8 | University of California, Los Angeles | 738 | NASA | |
9 | University of Michigan | 720 | Amazon | SpaceX |
10 | The University of Texas at Austin | 649 | SpaceX | |
11 | University of California, Irvine | 594 | Amazon | Boeing |
12 | Columbia University | 587 | Amazon | |
13 | Stanford University | 572 | Apple | |
14 | Cornell University | 566 | SpaceX | |
15 | Purdue University | 559 | Amazon | Tesla |
16 | Northeastern University | 550 | Amazon | Tesla |
17 | Texas A&M University | 514 | Lockheed Martin | ExxonMobil |
18 | University of Florida | 510 | Amazon | Lockheed Martin |
19 | San Jose State University | 371 | Amazon | Tesla |
20 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 367 | SpaceX | |
21 | University of Pennsylvania | 355 | SpaceX | |
22 | University of Maryland | 369 | Amazon | NASA |
23 | Penn State University | 350 | Lockheed Martin | Boeing |
24 | University of Central Florida | 336 | Lockheed Martin | NASA |
25 | North Carolina State University | 325 | Amazon | Apple |
26 | Virginia Tech | 291 | Microsoft | NASA |
27 | Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo | 287 | Apple | SpaceX |
28 | Ohio State University | 277 | Amazon | Tesla |
29 | Duke University | 275 | Amazon | |
30 | Washington University | 271 | Boeing | Amazon |
Top Feeder Rankings (adjusted for undergraduate enrollment)
Rank (Adjusted) | Institution | # Employed | Top Employer (Total) | Top Employer (Share) |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Carnegie Mellon University | 1,253 | Apple | |
2 | California Institute of Technology | 94 | SpaceX | |
3 | Columbia University | 587 | Amazon | |
4 | Stanford University | 572 | Apple | |
5 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 367 | SpaceX | |
6 | Georgia Institute of Technology | 1,205 | Amazon | SpaceX |
7 | University of Southern California | 1,502 | Amazon | SpaceX |
8 | Harvey Mudd College | 66 | SpaceX | |
9 | Olin College of Engineering | 19 | SpaceX | |
10 | Rice University | 194 | ExxonMobil | |
11 | Duke University | 275 | Amazon | |
12 | Cornell University | 566 | SpaceX | |
13 | University of Pennsylvania | 355 | SpaceX | |
14 | Washington University in St. Louis | 271 | Boeing | Amazon |
15 | Princeton University | 178 | SpaceX | |
16 | Rose Hulman Institute of Technology | 64 | SpaceX | |
17 | Johns Hopkins University | 175 | Amazon | NASA |
18 | Brown University | 225 | Microsoft | |
19 | University of Washington | 1,001 | Microsoft | Boeing |
20 | University of California, Berkeley | 991 | Apple | |
21 | Northeastern University | 550 | Amazon | Tesla |
22 | Santa Clara University | 163 | Amazon | Apple |
23 | University of California, San Diego | 863 | Amazon | Apple |
24 | Northwestern University | 230 | Amazon | Tesla |
25 | Harvard University | 161 | NASA | |
26 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 809 | Amazon | Apple |
27 | University of California, Los Angeles | 738 | NASA | |
28 | University of Michigan | 720 | Amazon | SpaceX |
29 | Swarthmore College | 38 | Amazon | |
30 | Cooper Union | 19 | SpaceX |


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