For the third year in a row, Machine Design and Electronic Design are running a Bracket Competition that lets our audience vote for their favorites among 32 top-notch engineering schools. Thirty-two U.S.-based universities who met specific criteria were selected by our editorial staff to participate. These universities are highly active in several engineering communities, including design competitions, hackathons, robotics, research, and incubators. (There’s a full list at the bottom of this blog.) The contest will span five weeks, and voting began March 7th.
At the end, one school will be crowned the winner, and it will enjoy an on-campus event (I’d call it a party) that includes food, music, and more prizes. One lucky student from that school will be randomly selected for the Grand Prize: an all-expense-paid, four-day trip to Maker Faire, May 17-20 in San Mateo, Calif.
To spread the prizes around, we’re awarding one randomly chosen student from each of the Final Four,(i.e., the top four schools) an InstaLab from DigiKey worth $3,000. It includes everything a budding engineer could want, including an oscilloscope, function generator, Bench power supply, digital multimeter, caliper, and soldering station, plus enough other tools and supplies to fill a benchtop.
Even the audience who vote will be eligible for some prizes. In every round, we’ll pick three people who register and vote to win $50. And at the end, we’ll pick five people from among all the people who voted in all five rounds to win $100.
Sponsors for the coemption include Digi-Key Electronics, Microchip Technology Inc., Renesas, Maxon Motors, and Altech Corp., five high-tech companies that strongly support engineering education.
So come out and vote in all five rounds and help us determine this year’s Best Engineering School. See how you favorites do, and see if Purdue can make it a three-peat.
Here’s the list of schools in this year’s bracket competition.
| Auburn Caltech Clemson University Cornell University Dartmouth Duke University Georgia Tech Illinois University Iowa State University John Hopkins University Marquette University MIT NC State University Northwestern University Ohio State University Oregon State University |
Penn State Purdue University Rice Stanford University Texas A&M University UC Davis University of California UCLA University of Colorado University of Maryland University of Michigan University of Pennsylvania University of Southern California University of Texas University of Wisconsin University of Washington Virginia Tech |
