MechSE Department Facts

Enrollment

The MechSE Department currently has 1,062 undergraduate students. 957 of these undergraduate students are majoring in Mechanical Engineering and 105 majoring in Engineering Mechanics. The department has 127 graduate students working on master's degrees (37 thesis, 90 non-thesis) and 324 graduate students working on PhD degrees.

Degrees Granted

In 2021, MechSE awarded 264 bachelor of science degrees.  227 of these bachelor of science degrees were in Mechanical Engineering and 37 were in Engineering Mechanics.  In 2021-22 the department awarded 62 master's degrees and 47 PhD degrees.

Faculty

MechSE’s 65 full-time faculty are all active in research and publish in high-impact journals, such as Science, Nature, Applied Physics Letters, and more. Even more impressive, Engineering at Illinois faculty are ranked first among our peers in the number of publications per faculty. On average, 20 or more of the papers written by senior professors are cited more than 10 times. More than half have received young investigator awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF) or Department of Defense.

Research

Research expenditures of $25 million allow faculty and students to advance knowledge in the key fundamental areas of biomechanics, fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, thermodynamics and heat transfer, applied physics, chemistry, dynamics and controls, computational science and applied math.

Rankings

MechSE's undergraduate program is currently ranked #7 in the U.S.,  and our graduate program is ranked 4th, with a #2 ranked online master's program, (US News & World Report). 

Other Statistics

The median ACT composite score of undergraduate students entering the department is 32.4 in 2020; however, test scores were not required for the 2021 nor 2022 admission cycle.  As of 2017, the average GRE percentile for enrolled graduate students was 90 (Quantitative). However, the GRE has been waived for grad applicants as of the last several years.