By Glyn Caddell, BSME · Author of Digital SAT Math Secrets · Tutoring since 2008 — Updated October 24, 2026
Six Missouri universities offer ABET-accredited engineering degrees, and this page lists what they cost and the test scores of the students they admit.
Two of them are campuses of the same university system, and the one that is not the flagship reports the higher scores and charges an out-of-state student less, a comparison worked out below the table.
The table is sorted by ACT because Missouri is an ACT state and every university on the page reports it.
Table of Contents
- Missouri Engineering Colleges by ACT and SAT Score
- Should You Apply to Mizzou or Missouri S&T for Engineering?
- Which Missouri Universities Have ABET-Accredited Engineering Schools?
- What If Your Score Is Below the Range You Want?
Missouri Engineering Colleges by ACT and SAT Score
The six universities below are the ones in Missouri that hold an ABET-accredited bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline and admit new students. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Washington University in St. Louis | 33 to 35 | 730 to 770 | 770 to 800 | $88,488 | 7,857 | 12% |
| Missouri University of Science and Technology | 25 to 31 | 580 to 690 | 610 to 730 | $29,231 | 5,521 | 73% |
| Saint Louis University | 25 to 31 | 600 to 700 | 600 to 710 | $71,932 | 7,267 | 75% |
| University of Missouri | 23 to 30 | 580 to 670 | 570 to 660 | $31,713 | 23,929 | 78% |
| University of Missouri-Kansas City | 20 to 28 | 640 to 760 | 650 to 790 | $25,320 | 6,817 | 72% |
| Southeast Missouri State University | 15 to 20 | Does not report SAT data | Does not report SAT data | $25,177 | 6,373 | 74% |
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.
Missouri S&T and Saint Louis University share an ACT range, and S&T is listed first on the SAT Math midpoint. UMKC’s reported SAT range is far above what its ACT range and admit rate would suggest and reads as a reporting artefact, as it did on our pre-med page for Missouri. The table is sorted on the ACT, so it does not affect the order. Only universities with an ABET-accredited engineering bachelor’s degree that admit new students are listed. UMSL’s joint engineering program with Washington University stopped admitting new students in January 2026 and is not listed. Missouri State’s cooperative engineering program awards Missouri S&T’s degree and is not listed separately.
Three things about that table are worth pausing on.
Missouri S&T sits above the University of Missouri on every test, two points higher on the ACT at both ends and 70 points higher at the SAT Math ceiling, and it charges a student from outside Missouri $2,808 less. The two are campuses of the same university system, and the next section is about which of them the system has priced as the engineering school.
Washington University’s Math range of 770 to 800 makes it the fourth school in this series, after MIT, Johns Hopkins and Harvard, whose bottom quarter of admitted students scored at or above 770. Its ACT floor of 33 is two points above the ceiling at every other school on the page.
Southeast Missouri State charges every student $9,903, in state or out. That is the lowest flat tuition in this series and the lowest out-of-state tuition at any public engineering school on any page so far, $86 below McNeese State’s on the Louisiana page.
A student can see where his ACT score sits on this list in the image above.
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Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University’s McKelvey School of Engineering holds ABET accreditation in biomedical, chemical, computer, electrical, mechanical and systems science and engineering, and Washington University has the highest range on the page on every test.
ACT composite 33 to 35. Reading & Writing 730 to 770, Math 770 to 800. The top quarter of admitted students scored at or above 35 on the ACT and 800 on Math. Cost of attendance $88,488, with tuition and fees at $65,790 for all students. 7,857 undergraduates, 12% admitted.
Washington University is the most selective school on the page by a factor of six and the most expensive by $16,556. It is also the university whose engineering degree UMSL students could earn through the joint program described below, until that program closed to new students.
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla holds ABET accreditation in disciplines including aerospace, architectural, ceramic, chemical, civil, computer, electrical, environmental, geological, mechanical, metallurgical, mining, nuclear and petroleum engineering, and Missouri S&T is the University of Missouri System’s engineering campus.
ACT composite 25 to 31. Reading & Writing 580 to 690, Math 610 to 730. The top quarter of admitted students scored at or above 31 on the ACT and 730 on Math. Cost of attendance $29,231, with tuition and fees at $14,984 in state and $33,248 out of state. 5,521 undergraduates, 73% admitted.
Missouri S&T is the smallest school on the page and holds more accredited engineering disciplines than any other, including the state’s only mining, petroleum, nuclear, ceramic and metallurgical engineering degrees. First-year students enter a foundational engineering and computing program before moving to a department. Its Math ceiling of 730 is the highest public figure on the page.
Saint Louis University
Saint Louis University’s School of Science and Engineering holds ABET accreditation in aerospace, biomedical, civil, computer, electrical and mechanical engineering, and Saint Louis University shares its ACT range with Missouri S&T.
ACT composite 25 to 31. Reading & Writing 600 to 700, Math 600 to 710. The top quarter of admitted students scored at or above 31 on the ACT and 710 on Math. Cost of attendance $71,932, with tuition and fees at $55,760 for all students. 7,267 undergraduates, 75% admitted.
Saint Louis University is a Jesuit university, the second most expensive school on the page, and the only private on it other than Washington University. Its Math ceiling of 710 is 20 points under S&T’s on the same ACT range, and it holds the only accredited aerospace engineering degree on the page other than S&T’s.
University of Missouri
The University of Missouri’s College of Engineering in Columbia holds ABET accreditation in disciplines including biological, biomedical, chemical, civil, computer, electrical, industrial and mechanical engineering, and the University of Missouri is the flagship of the system whose engineering campus is in Rolla.
ACT composite 23 to 30. Reading & Writing 580 to 670, Math 570 to 660. The top quarter of admitted students scored at or above 30 on the ACT and 660 on Math. Cost of attendance $31,713, with tuition and fees at $14,837 in state and $36,056 out of state. 23,929 undergraduates, 78% admitted.
The University of Missouri is the largest school on the page by a factor of three and the least selective, and its out-of-state tuition is the highest public figure on the page, $2,808 above S&T’s. Its in-state tuition is $147 below S&T’s.
University of Missouri-Kansas City
The University of Missouri-Kansas City’s School of Science and Engineering holds ABET accreditation in civil, electrical and mechanical engineering, and UMKC has the lowest cost of attendance on the page among the schools that report an SAT range.
ACT composite 20 to 28. Reading & Writing 640 to 760, Math 650 to 790, figures that read as a reporting artefact, as the note under the table says. The top quarter of admitted students scored at or above 28 on the ACT. Cost of attendance $25,320, with tuition and fees at $12,587 in state and $30,227 out of state. 6,817 undergraduates, 72% admitted.
UMKC is the third campus of the University of Missouri System on the page and the cheapest of the three for a resident. Its ACT range sits three points under the flagship’s at the floor and two at the ceiling.
Southeast Missouri State University
Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau holds ABET accreditation in engineering physics and industrial and systems engineering, and Southeast Missouri State charges every student the same tuition.
ACT composite 15 to 20. Southeast Missouri State reports no SAT range. The top quarter of admitted students scored at or above 20 on the ACT. Cost of attendance $25,177, with tuition and fees at $9,903 for all students. 6,373 undergraduates, 74% admitted.
Southeast Missouri State has the lowest range on the page and the lowest price on it for every student, and its $9,903 is the lowest flat tuition in this series. Its ACT ceiling of 20 is UMKC’s floor.
Six ranges say who got in. Two of them belong to one university, and the next section is about which campus a reader is looking at.
Should You Apply to Mizzou or Missouri S&T for Engineering?
The University of Missouri System holds two engineering colleges, the flagship’s in Columbia and Missouri S&T’s in Rolla, and S&T reports the higher range on every test, admits a smaller share of applicants, charges a resident $147 more and charges a non-resident $2,808 less. This page does not rank them. It sets them side by side, because the Scorecard lists them a row apart with the flagship’s name on the lower row.
The system has four campuses, Columbia, Rolla, Kansas City and St. Louis, under one Board of Curators, and three of the four hold accredited engineering degrees. Columbia is the flagship. Rolla was founded as the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy in 1870 and is the campus the system runs as its engineering and science university. The table below is the two colleges on the numbers this page carries.
| University of Missouri, Columbia | Missouri S&T, Rolla | |
|---|---|---|
| ACT composite, middle 50% | 23 to 30 | 25 to 31 |
| SAT Math, middle 50% | 570 to 660 | 610 to 730 |
| Admit rate | 78% | 73% |
| Undergraduates | 23,929 | 5,521 |
| In-state tuition and fees | $14,837 | $14,984 |
| Out-of-state tuition and fees | $36,056 | $33,248 |
| Accredited engineering disciplines | eight listed | fourteen listed |
Read the two columns down. Rolla is two points higher at both ends of the ACT, 40 points higher at the SAT Math floor and 70 at the ceiling, and admits five fewer applicants in a hundred. The resident pays within $150 of the same price at either. The non-resident pays $2,808 less at the campus with the higher range. The grid’s other engineering-focused public universities, Michigan Tech on our page on engineering colleges in Michigan and Colorado School of Mines on our page on engineering colleges in Colorado, are independent institutions with their own boards and their own prices. Missouri’s is the same university as the flagship, and the system has priced it below the flagship for a student from New York.
The image above shows one system, two engineering colleges, and the higher range at the lower price.
Take a New York student with a 29 on the ACT and a 690 on SAT Math. At the University of Missouri he is in the top quarter on both and pays $36,056. At S&T he is in the upper half on both and pays $33,248. At Saint Louis University he is in the upper half on both and pays $55,760. At Washington University he is four points under the ACT floor and 80 under the Math floor. Of the three Missouri schools that would place him in their upper half, the one with the highest range is the cheapest, and it is a campus of the same university as the most expensive public.
The other route to a Missouri engineering degree that a reader may have heard of has closed. For decades the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Washington University ran a Joint Undergraduate Engineering Program. A student took pre-engineering at UMSL, declared the major after passing MATH 1800 with a C or better within two attempts, moved to the upper division on a 2.75 GPA in his math, chemistry, physics and introductory engineering courses, and then took his upper-level civil, electrical or mechanical engineering courses at Washington University in the evenings, after 4 p.m., while registering through UMSL and paying UMSL fees plus an engineering fee. All three degrees are accredited by ABET’s Engineering Accreditation Commission. Washington University’s page on the program now says that “new students will no longer be admitted to the program after January 2026,” with support for enrolled students continuing through summer 2029. UMSL is not in the table above for that reason, and a student who finds an older page describing the route should know that it is shut.
The honest version is that this page does not know the flagship’s engineering admission line, if it has one, because the College of Engineering’s admissions page did not open this session, and it does not claim one. S&T’s first-year students enter a foundational engineering and computing program before they are admitted to a department, and the criteria for that step are the university’s to state. UMKC’s SAT range is footnoted and not explained. And a comparison is not a ranking. A student who wants biological engineering finds it in Columbia and not in Rolla, and a student who wants mining or nuclear engineering finds it in Rolla and nowhere else in the state.
Families who have read about the UMSL route frequently ask whether it is still open.
Can You Still Get a Washington University Engineering Degree Through UMSL?
A new student cannot get a Washington University engineering degree through UMSL. The joint program stopped admitting new students after January 2026, and the two universities are supporting the students already enrolled through summer 2029.
What closed was a route in which pre-engineering was taken at UMSL, upper-division civil, electrical or mechanical engineering was taken at Washington University in the evenings, and the student paid UMSL fees for the whole of it. The three degrees are still accredited for the students finishing them, and no one else can start.
The system’s two colleges are its own. The degrees are what the next section lists.
Which Missouri Universities Have ABET-Accredited Engineering Schools?
Six Missouri universities hold ABET-accredited engineering bachelor’s degrees and admit new students, four public and two private, and all six are in the table above.
In St. Louis, Washington University’s McKelvey School of Engineering holds six disciplines and Saint Louis University’s School of Science and Engineering holds six, with Boeing’s defense division and Bayer’s crop science headquarters the largest engineering employers in the region. In Rolla, Missouri S&T holds fourteen or more, including the state’s only mining, petroleum, nuclear, ceramic and metallurgical engineering degrees. In Columbia, the University of Missouri’s College of Engineering holds eight. In Kansas City, UMKC holds three, with Burns & McDonnell and Black & Veatch across the state line. In Cape Girardeau, Southeast Missouri State holds engineering physics and industrial and systems engineering.
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 Southeast Missouri State’s engineering technology degree is not one of the programs that places it on the list. Truman State routes students to an engineering degree through a three-two arrangement that finishes at another university, Missouri State’s cooperative engineering students earn Missouri S&T’s degree, and Drury, Lindenwood, Rockhurst, Evangel, Webster, Northwest Missouri State, Central Missouri, Missouri Southern, Lincoln and Harris-Stowe 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 where a student’s score places him.
What If Your Scores Are Below the Range You Want?
In Missouri five of the six universities admit 72% or more of their applicants, so the score’s job is placement and price rather than admission, and the student weighing Columbia against Rolla should know that the campus with the higher range is the cheaper one from New York.
The gap most Missouri engineering applicants face is the one between the flagship’s floor of 23 and S&T’s of 25, two points of ACT composite, and the Math and Science sections carry most of it for a student who has taken the courses. A New York student has five ranges and out-of-state tuition from $9,903 at Southeast Missouri State to $36,056 at the flagship.
The first step is finding out where the score actually is, section by section. A free diagnostic SAT gives a score that can be set against the SAT columns in the table and converted to the ACT scale for the rest of it.
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 same topics carry the ACT Math section.
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.
UMKC reports an SAT range far above what its ACT range and admit rate would suggest, as our pre-med page for Missouri also found. A reported range that does not fit the school’s other figures reads as a reporting artefact, and the reason this page sorts on the ACT is so that a figure like that cannot move the table.
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?
Missouri is an ACT state. Thirty-one Missouri institutions report an ACT range and twenty-three report SAT sections, and the state’s Bright Flight scholarship is set in ACT percentiles with SAT equivalents that are far harder to reach, as our page on pre-med colleges in Missouri explains.
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 from outside Missouri who holds an SAT should read the SAT columns and submit the test he scores higher on.
Engineering Programs in Nearby States
Missouri borders eight states, and Missouri students apply across those lines in numbers even with six accredited programs at home.
See engineering colleges in Illinois, engineering colleges in Kansas, and engineering colleges in Iowa.
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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