Through hard work and dedication over the years, Stevens Institute of Technology has become an increasingly prominent name in the college industry. As addressed in President Favardin’s welcome back message, recent 2025 graduate outcomes highlighted that over 93% of graduating students achieved their desired outcome six months after graduating. The Charles V. Schaefer’s School of Engineering alone averaged a mean salary of $97,400, shining as a brilliant example of Stevens’ growth throughout the years.
This astounding growth has not gone unnoticed at all by popular magazines: To complement this outstanding achievement, Stevens has recently been ranked within TIME Magazine’s top 30 colleges, providing a final score of 85.17/100. Such a ranking serves only to emphasize the rise in the return on investment and student outcomes at Stevens Institute of Technology.
But where does TIME Magazine’s methodology for such a ranking come from, and how does Stevens compare to top institutions mentioned in TIME Magazine’s ranking? TIME has stated that this ranking is a result of thorough evaluation of numerous colleges across a number of different criteria. Specifically, the main analysis stems from an examination of their three core pillars, consisting of student outcomes, learning environment, and attractiveness. Each is weighted differently: Student outcomes carry 75% of the overall score while attractiveness and learning environment each hold 10% and 15% of the score.
Student outcomes are primarily focused on what graduating students stand to gain from their experience at an institution, measured through their mean salary, graduation rate, and return on investment. In 2025 to 2026 alone, Stevens had managed an average salary rate of $86,900, with a four-year graduation rate of 81% and a six-year graduation rate of 89%.TIME Magazine rates Stevens an 87.93/100 on their ranking for student outcomes, outclassing prestigious universities such as the University of Chicago with 82.81/100 and Brown University with 81.98/100.
In terms of learning environment, Stevens maintains a student-to-faculty ratio of 11:1 as of 2026, allowing for more individual attention and stronger student-professor interpersonal connections. Our 2026 diversity report sits on the lower end, with 34% of the student body population representing women and 23% of students belonging to underrepresented communities; however, this is an upward trend following previous years such as 2019 to 2020 where 29% of the student population were female and only 14% were underrepresented minorities. TIME Magazine rates Stevens 73.23/100 in learning environment based on these statistics. Despite ranking on the lower side, Stevens beat out similar engineering-focused schools such as Georgia Institute of Technology with 39.20/100 and University of California-Berkeley with 67.75.
Finally, the third criterion of attractiveness describes the magnitude by which a college is coveted by incoming freshmen. Though there is no official metric for attractiveness, there have been historical instances of a Stevens degree being in high demand. In 2022, over 97.3% of students found desirable outcomes six months following graduation. Women graduates had a mean salary of $84,700, and computer science graduates averaged a staggering $106,300. Furthermore, Stevens’ proximity to New York City provides students ease of access to its vast wealth of employment opportunities. TIME Magazine rates Stevens 82.42/100 in attractiveness, which, although on the lower end compared to other colleges, is still representative of how the school’s continued dedication towards improvement has paid off.
Overall, Stevens’ ranking marks it as a rising name in the college industry. This accomplishment is just one of the many more that will emerge in Stevens’ bright future.
