By Glyn Caddell, BSME · Author of Digital SAT Math Secrets · Tutoring since 2008 — Updated October 23, 2026
Six Iowa universities offer ABET-accredited engineering degrees, and this page lists what they cost and the test scores of the students they admit.
Iowa’s three public universities admit on a published formula in which an ACT point and a tenth of a GPA point are worth exactly the same, and the formula is covered below the table.
Scores are given with an ACT composite column first, because most Iowa students take the ACT and the state’s formula is written in it, and with SAT sections beside it.
Table of Contents
- Iowa Engineering Colleges by ACT and SAT Score
- What ACT Score Do You Need for Iowa State or Iowa?
- Which Iowa Universities Have ABET-Accredited Engineering Schools?
- What If Your Index Is Below 245?
Iowa Engineering Colleges by ACT and SAT Score
The six universities below are the ones in Iowa that hold an ABET-accredited bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline. They are sorted by the midpoint of the ACT composite range, so the order can be checked from the table itself.
| College | ACT composite | SAT Reading & Writing | SAT Math | Cost of attendance | Undergraduates | Admit rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cornell College | 23 to 30 | 575 to 655 | 545 to 630 | $66,249 | 1,086 | 80% |
| Dordt University | 21 to 29 | 540 to 670 | 530 to 660 | $51,733 | 1,597 | 68% |
| Iowa State University | 21 to 28 | 560 to 670 | 560 to 690 | $24,018 | 25,367 | 89% |
| University of Iowa | 21 to 28 | 570 to 670 | 560 to 660 | $28,596 | 22,264 | 84% |
| St. Ambrose University | 20 to 25 | 490 to 580 | 440 to 590 | $51,141 | 1,916 | 77% |
| Loras College | Not reported | Not reported | Not reported | $50,537 | 1,083 | 100% |
Each range covers the middle 50% of admitted students who submitted that test. A quarter scored below the lower number, and the top quarter scored at or above the upper one. Being under the lower number does not rule a student out, and being just above it is not as safe as it looks.
Iowa State and Iowa share an ACT range, and Iowa State is listed first on the SAT Math midpoint. Only universities with an ABET-accredited engineering bachelor’s degree are listed. Grinnell College’s students reach an engineering degree through a three-two arrangement with another university and Grinnell is not listed. Iowa residents are admitted automatically to Iowa State and Iowa at a Regent Admission Index of 245.
Three things about that table are worth pausing on.
Iowa State admits 89% of applicants and Iowa 84%, and they hold the two highest SAT Math ceilings on the page, 690 and 660. High admit rates and mid-range scores sit together because the two universities admit on a formula rather than a competition, and the next section is about the formula.
Cornell College’s ACT ceiling of 30 is the highest on the page, at a college of 1,086 students in Mount Vernon that costs $66,249. Its Math range sits below Iowa State’s on both ends.
Loras College admits every applicant and reports no range on either test, so a student can compare himself to five of the six schools and not the sixth.
A student can see where his score sits on this list in the image above.
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Cornell College
Cornell College in Mount Vernon awards an ABET-accredited Bachelor of Science in Engineering, accredited in 2020, and Cornell has the highest ACT ceiling on the page.
ACT composite 23 to 30. SAT Reading & Writing 575 to 655, Math 545 to 630. The top quarter of admitted students scored at or above 30, 655 and 630. Cost of attendance $66,249, with tuition and fees at $52,660 for all students. 1,086 undergraduates, 80% admitted.
Cornell is the most expensive school on the page and teaches on a one-course-at-a-time block calendar, and its ACT Math range of 20 to 28 sits below its composite range at the floor.
Dordt University
Dordt University’s engineering program in Sioux Center holds ABET accreditation, and Dordt is the most selective school on the page by admit rate.
ACT composite 21 to 29. SAT Reading & Writing 540 to 670, Math 530 to 660. The top quarter scored at or above 29, 670 and 660. Cost of attendance $51,733, with tuition and fees at $37,050 for all students. 1,597 undergraduates, 68% admitted.
Dordt is affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church, and its SAT Math ceiling of 660 matches Iowa’s.
Iowa State University
Iowa State University’s College of Engineering in Ames is the state’s land-grant engineering school and the largest on this page, and Iowa State admits an Iowa resident automatically at a Regent Admission Index of 245.
ACT composite 21 to 28. SAT Reading & Writing 560 to 670, Math 560 to 690. The top quarter scored at or above 28, 670 and 690. Cost of attendance $24,018, with tuition and fees at $10,787 in-state and $28,881 out-of-state. 25,367 undergraduates, 89% admitted.
Iowa State is the cheapest university on the page by cost of attendance and in-state tuition, and it has the highest SAT Math range. Applicants to its College of Engineering must have completed two years of a single foreign language in high school, a requirement the rest of the university does not impose.
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa’s College of Engineering in Iowa City holds ABET accreditation in biomedical, chemical, civil, electrical, environmental, industrial and mechanical engineering, and Iowa admits an Iowa resident automatically at a Regent Admission Index of 245.
ACT composite 21 to 28. SAT Reading & Writing 570 to 670, Math 560 to 660. The top quarter scored at or above 28, 670 and 660. Cost of attendance $28,596, with tuition and fees at $11,283 in-state and $33,371 out-of-state. 22,264 undergraduates, 84% admitted.
Iowa’s out-of-state tuition is $4,490 above Iowa State’s for a Math ceiling 30 points lower, and its Reading & Writing floor is the highest among the three public universities in the state.
St. Ambrose University
St. Ambrose University’s engineering programs in Davenport hold ABET accreditation in industrial and mechanical engineering, and St. Ambrose is a Catholic university in the Quad Cities.
ACT composite 20 to 25. SAT Reading & Writing 490 to 580, Math 440 to 590. The top quarter scored at or above 25, 580 and 590. Cost of attendance $51,141, with tuition and fees at $36,658 for all students. 1,916 undergraduates, 77% admitted.
St. Ambrose has the lowest ranges on the page among the schools that report, and it sits across the river from John Deere’s headquarters in Moline.
Loras College
Loras College’s engineering program in Dubuque holds ABET accreditation, recently reaffirmed, and Loras reports no admitted score range on either test.
Cost of attendance $50,537, with tuition and fees at $39,824 for all students. 1,083 undergraduates, 100% admitted.
Loras is a Catholic college, the smallest school on the page, and the one that admits every applicant.
Six rows, and the two that most Iowa applicants are looking at are admitted by arithmetic rather than by review.
What ACT Score Do You Need for Iowa State or Iowa?
An Iowa resident is admitted automatically to Iowa State, the University of Iowa or Northern Iowa when his Regent Admission Index reaches 245, and the index is three times his ACT composite plus thirty times his cumulative GPA plus five times his years of core high school courses, so the ACT score he needs depends on the other two numbers.
The Iowa Board of Regents publishes the formula. RAI = (3 x ACT composite) + (30 x cumulative GPA) + (5 x years of RAI-approved core courses), with the GPA capped at 4.00 and SAT scores converted to ACT composite equivalents. An Iowa high school graduate with an RAI of at least 245 who has taken the required courses is admitted. A student below 245 is not refused. Each university reviews him individually, and one university’s decision does not bind the others. Iowa State and Iowa are both test-optional, and an applicant who submits no score is reviewed on his GPA and core courses rather than scored on the index.
The formula makes the test’s worth exact. One ACT composite point is worth three index points. One tenth of a GPA point is also worth three index points. At the admission door the two are the same thing, and a student can trade one for the other.
| Cumulative GPA | Index before the test, with 16 core years | ACT composite needed for 245 |
|---|---|---|
| 3.8 | 194 | 17 |
| 3.5 | 185 | 20 |
| 3.3 | 179 | 22 |
| 3.0 | 170 | 25 |
| 2.7 | 161 | 28 |
Computed from the Board of Regents’ formula with sixteen years of core courses. Each additional core year adds five points, and each ACT point adds three.
Take a student with a 3.3 GPA and sixteen core years. His index before the test is 99 plus 80, 179. He needs 66 points from the ACT, a 22. Every point above 22 is a point he did not need, and every point below is three index points he has to find somewhere else, and in his senior year there is nowhere else to find them.
The image above shows one ACT point, one tenth of a GPA point, three index points.
Three things keep the arithmetic honest. The index admits to the university, not to the College of Engineering and not into calculus. Iowa State’s engineering college adds one requirement of its own, two years of a single foreign language, and no higher index. Both universities place students into their first math course by the ALEKS assessment after admission, and neither uses the ACT or SAT for that, so the score is a term in the admission formula and nothing in the first semester’s mathematics.
For a student from outside Iowa the formula is a guide rather than a guarantee. The regents say each university may use the index for out-of-state applicants, and Iowa State says non-residents may be held to higher standards while meeting at least the same requirements as residents. A New York applicant should compute his index knowing that 245 is the resident line, and knowing that the out-of-state tuition the index does not change is $28,881 at Iowa State and $33,371 at Iowa.
Families who have worked through the formula frequently ask whether it reaches into the first year.
Does the Regent Admission Index Decide Your First Math Course?
The Regent Admission Index does not decide a student’s first math course. Iowa State and the University of Iowa place every incoming student into mathematics by the ALEKS placement assessment, taken after admission, and the index plays no part in it.
The index opens the university and the assessment opens calculus. An engineering student who reaches 245 with a strong GPA and a modest ACT should expect to prove his precalculus on the assessment, and the topics it tests are the ones the ACT Math section tests.
The formula is the state’s. The degrees are the universities’, and the next section lists them.
Which Iowa Universities Have ABET-Accredited Engineering Schools?
Six Iowa universities hold ABET-accredited engineering bachelor’s degrees, two public and four private, and all six are in the table above.
In Ames, Iowa State’s College of Engineering holds accredited degrees across the standard disciplines and in agricultural, materials and software engineering among others. In Iowa City, the University of Iowa’s College of Engineering holds seven. Collins Aerospace in Cedar Rapids, between the two campuses, and John Deere in Waterloo, Dubuque and the Quad Cities are the state’s largest engineering employers.
The four private colleges are small and church-affiliated. Dordt in Sioux Center holds an accredited engineering program with concentrations, St. Ambrose in Davenport holds industrial and mechanical engineering, Loras in Dubuque holds an accredited engineering program, and Cornell College in Mount Vernon holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering accredited in 2020.
Accreditation matters for a reason that is easy to miss at seventeen. Licensure as a professional engineer normally requires a degree from an ABET-accredited engineering program. Grinnell reports a Math range of 710 to 790 and is not on the page because its students complete an engineering degree at a partner university after three years in Grinnell. Northern Iowa’s technology degrees are accredited under a separate ABET commission. Drake, Luther, Coe, Simpson, Wartburg and the state’s other private colleges report ranges and award no engineering degree.
Nothing on this page ranks the six. The table’s order is a stated, verifiable number, and the choice among accredited programs comes down to cost, discipline and, at the two public universities, a formula.
What If Your Index Is Below 245?
An Iowa engineering applicant below 245 knows to the point how far he is, and the test is the one term in the formula he can move in a spring.
Three index points per ACT point. A student fifteen points short needs five ACT points or half a GPA point, and only one of those is possible in a semester. A student six points short needs two ACT points. The formula tells him which, and the ACT Math section, where the gains come fastest for a student who has been doing well in math class, is the place most engineering applicants find them. A New York applicant computes the same index knowing 245 is the resident line, and has out-of-state tuition the index does not change.
The first step is finding out where the score actually is. A free diagnostic SAT gives a section-by-section result that converts to the ACT scale the index uses.
The Math section rewards the same handful of topics on every test date, on either test, and a student who knows which of them he is missing can close a gap of two to four ACT points in weeks rather than months. The method is on our page on improving your SAT score, and the topics carry across.
How to Read These Score Ranges
Every range on this page covers the middle 50% of admitted students who submitted that test. The lower number is the 25th percentile and the upper number is the 75th, so a quarter of admitted students scored at or above it.
A range and a formula are different kinds of number. The range describes who enrolled. The formula describes who is admitted automatically, and a student can be inside the range and below 245 if his GPA is low, or above 245 and below the range if his GPA is high.
Because most colleges are now test-optional, the ranges that are published describe only the students who chose to submit at all. Students with strong scores submit and students with weak ones don’t, so a published range sits higher than the range for everyone who was actually admitted. More on what SAT score you need for college and on test-optional colleges.
Should You Take the SAT Instead?
Iowa is an ACT state. Seventeen Iowa institutions report an ACT range and fourteen report SAT sections, most Iowa students take the ACT, and the Regent Admission Index is written in ACT points, with SAT scores converted to it.
That is why the table on this page carries an ACT composite column and is sorted by it. Every university on the page accepts either test, and a student who scores higher on the SAT should submit it and let the regents convert it.
Engineering Programs in Nearby States
Iowa borders Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota, and Iowa students apply across those lines in numbers even with six accredited programs at home.
See engineering colleges in Illinois, engineering colleges in Minnesota, and engineering colleges in Nebraska.
Engineering Colleges in Other States
We publish the same breakdown for engineering programs in every state.
See engineering colleges by state for the full list.
Glyn Caddell
Glyn Caddell holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from NJIT and has been tutoring New York City students since 2008. He founded Caddell Prep in 2012 and is the author of Digital SAT Math Secrets: Lessons & Tricks to Quickly Improve to a Perfect 800 on the Math Test, which contains over 900 practice problems and is used in Caddell Prep’s SAT math classes. He is founding president of the Staten Island Technical High School alumni association and teaches every lesson on this site personally.
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