By Glyn Caddell, BSME · Author of Digital SAT Math Secrets · Tutoring since 2008 — Updated October 23, 2026
Three Maine schools offer ABET-accredited engineering degrees, and this page lists what they cost and the SAT scores of the students they admit.
The University of Maine publishes no score range at all and one score line, an SAT Math of 670 to start in calculus without a placement exam, and that line sits above the top quarter of both Maine schools that do publish a range, a comparison worked out below the table.
Scores are given by section and the table is sorted by Math, with the flagship last because it reports none.
Table of Contents
- Maine Engineering Colleges by SAT Math Score
- What SAT Score Do You Need to Start in Calculus at the University of Maine?
- Which Maine Schools Have ABET-Accredited Engineering Programs?
- What If Your Score Is Below the Line You Want?
Maine Engineering Colleges by SAT Math Score
The three schools below are the ones in Maine that hold an ABET-accredited bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline. The two that report scores are sorted by the midpoint of the SAT Math range, and the one that does not is listed last.
| College | SAT Reading & Writing | SAT Math | Cost of attendance | Undergraduates | Admit rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maine Maritime Academy | 565 to 625 | 530 to 635 | $31,046 | 942 | 54% |
| University of Southern Maine | 500 to 650 | 490 to 600 | $23,717 | 4,222 | 79% |
| University of Maine | Does not report SAT data | Does not report SAT data | $27,328 | 8,496 | 97% |
Each range covers the middle 50% of admitted students who submitted the SAT. 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.
The University of Maine reports no SAT or ACT range to the Scorecard and is listed last. Only schools with an ABET-accredited engineering bachelor’s degree are listed. Maine Maritime’s marine engineering technology and power engineering technology degrees, and the University of Maine’s engineering technology degrees, are accredited under a separate ABET commission and are not the degrees that put those schools on the list.
Three things about that table are worth pausing on.
The University of Maine’s out-of-state tuition, $36,756, is more than its own cost of attendance for a Maine resident, $27,328. A student from New Jersey or New York pays more in tuition alone than a student from Bangor pays for tuition, housing, food and books together, unless a scholarship covered below closes the gap.
Maine Maritime’s in-state tuition, $15,158, is the highest resident charge on the page and $1,832 above the flagship’s. The smallest school on the page, with 942 students, charges a Maine family more than the largest.
Southern Maine’s Math range, 490 to 600, is the lowest on the page, and its ACT range, 24 to 28, is the highest. Maine Maritime’s ACT range of 21 to 26 sits below Southern Maine’s while its Math range sits above, so a student holding both tests may rank the two schools differently depending on which one he reads.
A student can see where the flagship’s calculus line sits against the state in the image above, and that neither reporting school’s bar reaches it.
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Maine Maritime Academy
Maine Maritime Academy in Castine holds ABET accreditation in marine systems engineering, offered on a license track that adds Coast Guard sea time and a non-license track that does not, and Maine Maritime has the highest Math range on the page.
Reading & Writing 565 to 625, Math 530 to 635. The top quarter of admitted students scored at or above 635 on Math. Cost of attendance $31,046, with tuition and fees at $15,158 in state and $31,102 out of state. 942 undergraduates, 54% admitted.
Maine Maritime is the smallest school on the page, the most selective by a wide margin, and the most expensive for a Maine resident. It holds one accredited engineering degree, and its two other engineering programs are technology degrees that do not qualify for the list.
University of Southern Maine
The University of Southern Maine’s Department of Engineering in Portland and Gorham awards degrees in electrical and computer engineering and in mechanical engineering, and Southern Maine has the lowest cost of attendance on the page.
Reading & Writing 500 to 650, Math 490 to 600. The top quarter of admitted students scored at or above 600 on Math. Cost of attendance $23,717, with tuition and fees at $11,284 in state and $27,944 out of state. 4,222 undergraduates, 79% admitted.
Southern Maine is the cheapest school on the page for a resident and for a non-resident, and its Math ceiling of 600 is 35 points below Maine Maritime’s and 70 below the flagship’s calculus line.
University of Maine
The University of Maine’s College of Engineering in Orono holds ABET accreditation in disciplines including biomedical, chemical, civil, computer, electrical and mechanical engineering and engineering physics, and the University of Maine publishes no admitted score range on either test.
Cost of attendance $27,328, with tuition and fees at $13,326 in state and $36,756 out of state. 8,496 undergraduates, 97% admitted.
The University of Maine is the largest school on the page, the least selective, and the only one with no range to compare a score against. The one score it does publish for an engineering student is a placement line, and that line is the subject of the next section.
What SAT Score Do You Need to Start in Calculus at the University of Maine?
An SAT Math of 670 or an ACT Math of 29 lets a first-year student at the University of Maine enroll in any math course up to MAT 126, Calculus I, without a placement exam, and every other student takes the ALEKS PPL assessment before registering.
The university’s admissions placement page and its engineering accepted-students page state the rule the same way. A 670 on SAT Math or a 29 on ACT Math allows enrollment in any math class up to MAT 126. A 3 or above on AP Calculus AB counts for MAT 126, and a 3 or above on AP Calculus BC counts for MAT 126 and MAT 127. All other students take ALEKS, and ALEKS decides their first course.
What the university does not publish is a range. It reports no SAT or ACT middle 50% to the Scorecard, so the question every other page in this series asks, where does the line sit in the school’s own class, cannot be asked of the University of Maine. This page cannot say whether 670 is the top quarter of UMaine’s engineering class or the bottom half of it, and neither can anyone reading UMaine’s figures.
What can be asked is where 670 sits in the state. Maine Maritime’s Math range is 530 to 635, so the flagship’s calculus line is 35 points above the 75th percentile of the most selective engineering school in Maine. Southern Maine’s range is 490 to 600, so the line is 70 points above the top quarter there. A student whose Math score puts him in the top quarter of either school that publishes a range is below the line at the school that does not, and sits the placement exam.
Against this series, 670 is among the higher published calculus lines. Alabama’s flagship puts calculus at 710 on our page on engineering colleges in Alabama, and Arkansas’s puts it at 660 on our page on engineering colleges in Arkansas. Maine’s is between them, at a school that admits 97% of applicants and asks none of them for a score.
The image above shows that the best score on the page by the two published ranges still takes the placement exam at the flagship.
Take a student with a 620 on SAT Math. At Maine Maritime he is in the upper half of the admitted range and applying to a school that admits 54%. At Southern Maine he is 20 points above the ceiling, better on Math than three quarters of the admitted class. At the University of Maine he is admitted, because 97% are and no score is required, and then he logs in to ALEKS, because 620 is 50 points below the line that skips it. Whether he starts in MAT 126 or in precalculus is decided by that exam and not by the 620. The student who outscores both ranges on the page is placed at the flagship by a test he takes after he gets in.
The University of Maine also publishes the other number a New York family wants. Its Flagship Match charges an out-of-state student from a listed state the in-state tuition and fees of his home state’s flagship, an award the university gives as $14,133 to $19,386 a year against out-of-state tuition of $36,756. The program began with Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and the university has since added Rhode Island, California and Illinois. New York is not on the list as it has been reported, so a New Jersey student pays Rutgers’ resident price at Orono and a New York student pays $36,756, less the Flagship Leaders award of $9,000 to $12,000 that a 2.5 GPA qualifies him for. [VERIFY the current Flagship Match state list on umaine.edu before publishing. If New York has been added, rewrite this sentence to give the SUNY-matched figure.]
The honest version is that 670 is a placement line and not an admission line. Nobody is kept out of engineering at the University of Maine on a Math score. The ALEKS route places most of the class, and a student with a 600 who has kept his algebra and trigonometry sharp may test into MAT 126 on ALEKS and sit beside the 670 student in the same room on the first day. The line decides who takes the exam. The exam decides the course.
Families reading the placement rule frequently ask whether a score below the line costs a student the engineering major.
Does a Score Below 670 Keep You Out of Engineering at UMaine?
A score below 670 does not keep a student out of engineering at the University of Maine. The university is test-optional, it admits 97% of applicants, and the 670 decides only whether a student takes the ALEKS exam before his first math course.
A student below the line who places into MAT 126 on ALEKS starts where the 670 student starts. A student who places into precalculus starts one course earlier and adds a semester to the math sequence that every engineering curriculum at Orono runs through. The major is the same in both cases. The calendar is not.
The flagship’s line is its own. The degrees are what the next section lists.
Which Maine Schools Have ABET-Accredited Engineering Programs?
Three Maine schools hold ABET-accredited engineering bachelor’s degrees, all three public, and all three are in the table above.
In Orono, the University of Maine’s College of Engineering holds the state’s full set of disciplines, from biomedical to mechanical, beside the Advanced Structures and Composites Center that tests wind blades and bridge girders on campus. In Castine, Maine Maritime Academy holds marine systems engineering on two tracks, and Bath Iron Works, the Navy destroyer yard, is an hour down the coast. In Portland and Gorham, the University of Southern Maine’s Department of Engineering holds electrical and computer engineering and mechanical engineering, with the Pratt & Whitney plant in North Berwick the largest engineering employer in its part of the state.
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, and that is why Maine Maritime’s marine engineering technology and power engineering technology degrees and the University of Maine’s engineering technology degrees are not the programs that place those schools on the list. Bowdoin, Colby and Bates award no engineering degree, and Bowdoin’s students reach one through a three-two arrangement that finishes at another university. The University of New England, Husson, Saint Joseph’s, Thomas and the University of Maine’s other campuses award no engineering degree.
Nothing on this page ranks the three. The table’s order is a stated, verifiable number where one exists, and the choice among accredited programs comes down to cost, discipline and where a student’s score places him.
What If Your Scores Are Below the Range You Want?
In Maine the score is never the gate. Maine Maritime admits half its applicants and publishes a range, Southern Maine admits four in five, and the flagship admits nearly everyone and reads no score at all, so the Maine question is not admission but the one line at Orono that skips one exam.
The gap most University of Maine engineering students face is the one between their Math score and 670, or between their ALEKS result and MAT 126, and the same algebra, functions and trigonometry close both. A student at 600 who spends the summer on those topics arrives at a different ALEKS score and a different first course, and the 70 points between him and the line are the small end of what a focused summer produces. A New York applicant has the two ranges, the flagship’s line, and out-of-state tuition of $27,944 at Southern Maine, $31,102 at Maine Maritime and $36,756 at Orono.
The first step is finding out where the score actually is, section by section. A free diagnostic SAT gives a Math score that can be set against the two ranges and against the 670.
The Math section rewards the same handful of topics on every test date, and a student who knows which of them he is missing can close a gap of 50 to 100 points in weeks rather than months. The method is on our page on improving your SAT Math score, and the topics are the ones ALEKS asks about.
How to Read These Score Ranges
Every range on this page covers the middle 50% of admitted students who submitted the SAT. 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 school that publishes a line and no range gives a student a target and no company. He knows what the school asks and not who got in, so this page sets the flagship’s target against the other schools’ ranges, because that is the only comparison the published data allows.
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 ACT Instead?
Nine Maine institutions report an SAT range and five report an ACT range, and the University of Maine’s calculus line is 29 on ACT Math beside 670 on SAT Math.
The two reporting schools invert on the ACT. Southern Maine’s 24 to 28 sits above Maine Maritime’s 21 to 26 while its Math range sits below, so a student who holds both tests should read both columns before deciding which school he is ahead of. All three schools accept either test, and a student should submit whichever he scores higher on.
Engineering Programs in Nearby States
Maine borders only New Hampshire, and its students cross into the rest of New England in numbers, because three accredited programs is the shortest list in the region.
See engineering colleges in New Hampshire, engineering colleges in Massachusetts, and engineering colleges in Vermont.
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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