By Glyn Caddell, BSME · Author of Digital SAT Math Secrets · Tutoring since 2008 — Updated October 22, 2026
Five Georgia universities offer ABET-accredited engineering degrees, and this page lists what they cost and the SAT scores of the students they admit.
From fall 2026 every public one of them requires an SAT or ACT score, under a University System of Georgia rule that ended the GPA waiver two of them had used the year before. The rule, the schools it covers and the waiver it replaced are covered below the table.
Scores are given by section, and the table is sorted by Math because that is the section engineering programs use.
Table of Contents
- Georgia Engineering Colleges by SAT Math Score
- Do Georgia’s Public Engineering Schools Require the SAT?
- Which Georgia Universities Have ABET-Accredited Engineering Schools?
- What If Your Score Is Below the Range You Want?
Georgia Engineering Colleges by SAT Math Score
The five universities below are the ones in Georgia that hold an ABET-accredited bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline. They are sorted by the midpoint of the SAT Math range, so the order can be checked from the table itself.
| College | SAT Reading & Writing | SAT Math | Cost of attendance | Undergraduates | Admit rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia Institute of Technology | 680 to 750 | 690 to 790 | $28,167 | 18,785 | 14% |
| University of Georgia | 640 to 730 | 630 to 750 | $27,993 | 32,137 | 38% |
| Mercer University | 590 to 680 | 570 to 670 | $58,204 | 4,500 | 69% |
| Kennesaw State University | 510 to 620 | 490 to 600 | $24,008 | 41,254 | 69% |
| Georgia Southern University | 528 to 583 | 458 to 550 | $24,430 | 21,790 | 88% |
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.
Only universities with an ABET-accredited engineering bachelor’s degree are listed. Emory, Spelman, Morehouse and Clark Atlanta students reach an engineering degree through Georgia Tech’s dual-degree program and are not listed. Every public university on the list requires a test score from fall 2026, and the two flagships have since fall 2022.
Three things about that table are worth pausing on.
Georgia Tech’s Math floor of 690 is the highest at any public university on any page in this series so far, and its ACT Math range of 29 to 35 reaches a perfect score at the top quarter. It admits 14% of applicants.
Kennesaw State, with 41,254 undergraduates, is the largest university in the state, and it admits 69% with a Math range whose floor sits 200 points below Georgia Tech’s. The two schools are twenty miles apart.
Georgia Southern’s Reading & Writing range sits 70 points above its Math range at the floor, 528 against 458, the widest gap in that direction on any page in this series. Its engineering students are drawn from a class whose Math scores run well below its reading scores.
A student can see where his Math score sits on this list in the image above.
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Georgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Engineering in Atlanta is the largest engineering college in the United States by degrees awarded, and Georgia Tech has required an SAT or ACT score from every applicant since fall 2022.
Reading & Writing 680 to 750, Math 690 to 790. The top quarter of admitted students scored at or above 750 and 790. Cost of attendance $28,167, with tuition and fees at $12,058 in-state and $34,484 out-of-state. 18,785 undergraduates, 14% admitted.
Georgia Tech is an institute of engineering, computing and science with no other kind of student, so its applicant pool selects itself, and it admits one applicant in seven on top of that. It is the one school on this page where the pool is narrow and the gate is narrow at the same time.
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia’s College of Engineering in Athens holds eight ABET-accredited degrees, and UGA has required an SAT or ACT score from every applicant since fall 2022.
Reading & Writing 640 to 730, Math 630 to 750. The top quarter scored at or above 730 and 750. Cost of attendance $27,993, with tuition and fees at $11,450 in-state and $31,688 out-of-state. 32,137 undergraduates, 38% admitted.
UGA’s Math ceiling of 750 is 40 points below Georgia Tech’s and its floor is 60 below, at an admit rate nearly three times as high. Its calculus placement rule is covered below.
Mercer University
Mercer University’s School of Engineering in Macon holds ABET accreditation in biomedical, computer, electrical, environmental, industrial and mechanical engineering, and Mercer is the one private engineering school in the state.
Reading & Writing 590 to 680, Math 570 to 670. The top quarter scored at or above 680 and 670. Cost of attendance $58,204, with tuition and fees at $42,312 for all students. 4,500 undergraduates, 69% admitted.
Mercer costs approximately twice what UGA costs for a Math range 60 points lower at the floor and 80 lower at the ceiling, and it is the only school on the page the fall 2026 rule does not bind.
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw State University’s Southern Polytechnic College of Engineering and Engineering Technology on its Marietta campus is the former Southern Polytechnic State University, merged into Kennesaw State in 2015, and Kennesaw State requires an SAT or ACT score from every applicant from fall 2026.
Reading & Writing 510 to 620, Math 490 to 600. The top quarter scored at or above 620 and 600. Cost of attendance $24,008, with tuition and fees at $5,808 in-state and $17,736 out-of-state. 41,254 undergraduates, 69% admitted.
Kennesaw State is the cheapest school on the page by cost of attendance and by in-state tuition. In 2025-26 it waived the test for applicants with a 3.2 GPA, and that waiver has ended.
Georgia Southern University
Georgia Southern University’s Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing in Statesboro holds ABET accreditation in civil, electrical, mechanical and manufacturing engineering, and Georgia Southern requires an SAT or ACT score from every applicant from fall 2026.
Reading & Writing 528 to 583, Math 458 to 550. The top quarter scored at or above 583 and 550. Cost of attendance $24,430, with tuition and fees at $6,022 in-state and $17,734 out-of-state. 21,790 undergraduates, 88% admitted.
Georgia Southern admits nearly nine applicants in ten and has the lowest Math range on the page. Like Kennesaw State, it waived the test at a 3.2 GPA in 2025-26 and no longer does.
Five ranges, and from fall 2026 every public one of them describes a class in which every applicant submitted a score. That is new, and the next section says how it happened.
Do Georgia's Public Engineering Schools Require the SAT?
From fall 2026 every public engineering school in Georgia requires an SAT or ACT score from every first-year applicant, under the University System of Georgia’s admission requirements, and Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia have required one since fall 2022.
The system’s published requirements state that for admission for fall 2026 and later, SAT or ACT scores will be required at seven institutions: the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Augusta, Kennesaw State, Georgia Southern and Georgia College & State. Four of the seven are the state’s public engineering schools. The Board of Regents added Augusta, Georgia State, Georgia Southern and Kennesaw State to the list on May 14, 2024, giving applicants two cycles’ notice. The system’s other nineteen institutions may require scores based on an applicant’s GPA, and none of them holds an engineering degree.
The rule replaces a waiver that applied the year before. In 2025-26 a Georgia public university could admit an applicant without a score if his GPA on the required high school curriculum reached a threshold: 3.4 at the research universities, 3.2 at the comprehensive universities including Kennesaw State and Georgia Southern, and 3.0 at the state universities. Georgia Tech and UGA were exempt from the waiver throughout and required a score anyway. From fall 2026 the waiver does not apply at any of the seven.
Take a student with a 3.3 GPA and no test score who applies to Kennesaw State’s engineering college. In 2025-26 he was admitted on his GPA. In 2026-27 his application is incomplete until a score arrives, and the same student with an 1100 is read against Kennesaw’s 490 to 600 Math range and sits inside it.
The image above shows the year the waiver ended at each school.
Georgia is the third of three states in this series to answer the same question three ways. Florida never dropped the score and requires it at every public, as our page on engineering colleges in Florida sets out. California will not read it at any public, as our page on engineering colleges in California sets out. Georgia dropped it in 2020 and put it back, campus by campus, on a schedule a student can look up.
The same score decides the state’s merit scholarship. Our page on pre-med colleges in Georgia carries the Zell Miller Scholarship in full, including the rule that catches students: the 1200 SAT must come from a single test date, not a superscore. For an engineering applicant the number sits in a particular place. A 1200 is below the floor at Georgia Tech and UGA and inside the admitted range at Kennesaw State and Georgia Southern, so for an applicant to the two flagships the scholarship is the easier of his two numbers, and the single-sitting rule is the only part of it likely to trip him.
The score is required for admission and does nothing after it at UGA. UGA places students into MATH 2250, Calculus, on an ALEKS placement score of 76 or higher, or by passing its own departmental placement exam out of precalculus. Neither route uses an SAT or ACT Math score. A student below 76 registers for MATH 1113, Precalculus, and starts his engineering math sequence a course behind.
Families comparing the five schools frequently ask how far above the others Georgia Tech sits.
How High Is Georgia Tech's SAT Math Range?
Georgia Tech’s admitted students scored 690 to 790 on SAT Math, and 690 is the highest Math floor at a public university on any page in this series so far. The ACT Math range is 29 to 35, and 35 is a perfect score.
The range is high for two reasons that normally appear separately. Every Georgia Tech student is an engineering, computing or science student, so the applicants select themselves, as they do at Colorado School of Mines and Florida Poly. And Georgia Tech admits 14% of them, which Mines and Florida Poly do not. A student at 680 Math, inside the top quarter at UGA, is below the floor at Georgia Tech.
Whatever the range, the degree at the end is an accredited one at all five schools, and that is the next section.
Which Georgia Universities Have ABET-Accredited Engineering Schools?
Five Georgia universities hold ABET-accredited engineering bachelor’s degrees, four public and one private, and all five are in the table above.
In Atlanta and Athens, Georgia Tech holds accredited degrees in aerospace, biomedical, chemical and biomolecular, civil, computer, electrical, environmental, industrial, materials, mechanical, and nuclear and radiological engineering, and UGA’s College of Engineering holds agricultural, biochemical, biological, civil, computer systems, electrical and electronics, environmental, and mechanical engineering. Delta, Georgia Power and the Atlanta consulting and construction industry are the largest engineering employers in the corridor between them. Georgia Tech’s dual-degree program is the route by which students at Emory, Spelman, Morehouse and Clark Atlanta complete an engineering degree, three years at the home college and two at Georgia Tech, and Spelman and Morehouse are historically Black colleges whose engineering graduates come through it.
Outside Atlanta, Kennesaw State’s Southern Polytechnic College in Marietta holds civil, computer, electrical, industrial and systems, mechanical, and mechatronics engineering, with the engineering technology degrees it inherited from Southern Polytechnic accredited under a separate ABET commission and not counted here. Mercer’s School of Engineering in Macon holds six accredited degrees beside Robins Air Force Base. Georgia Southern’s Paulson College in Statesboro holds four, an hour from the port of Savannah.
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 Savannah State’s engineering technology degrees and Emory’s dual-degree arrangement, where the engineering degree is Georgia Tech’s, do not put those schools on the list. Georgia State and Augusta are on the system’s test-required list and not on this page because neither holds an engineering degree.
Nothing on this page ranks the five. The table’s order is a stated, verifiable number, 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?
From fall 2026 a Georgia applicant to any public engineering school cannot skip the score, so the question is only how high, and he is normally chasing two numbers.
The first is the range at the school he wants. The second is Zell Miller’s 1200 on a single date. At Georgia Tech and UGA the range is the harder number by a distance, and a student who reaches it has passed the scholarship line on the way. At Kennesaw State and Georgia Southern the scholarship is the harder number, and the single-sitting rule means both sections have to land on the same day. A New York applicant has one number, the range, and out-of-state tuition the score does not change: $34,484 at Georgia Tech and $31,688 at UGA.
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 table above and a total that can be set against the Zell Miller line.
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 score.
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.
Kennesaw State’s and Georgia Southern’s ranges were reported while both still waived the test for applicants above a 3.2 GPA, so they describe the students who submitted a score and not the whole admitted class. The first class admitted under the fall 2026 rule will produce the first complete range, and this page will carry it when the Department of Education publishes it.
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?
The University System of Georgia accepts either test, and all five universities on this page report both an SAT and an ACT range.
Zell Miller accepts an ACT composite in place of the 1200 SAT, and the single-sitting rule applies to both tests. A student should take whichever he scores higher on, and should plan for his best sections to land on one date if the scholarship is in reach.
Engineering Programs in Nearby States
Georgia borders Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina, and Georgia students apply across those lines in numbers even with five accredited programs at home.
See engineering colleges in Florida, engineering colleges in Alabama, and engineering colleges in South Carolina.
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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