About · Rossin College
Engineering FAQ
The questions we get asked most about studying engineering at Lehigh — answered straight, and checked against what the College actually publishes.
- Undergraduate majors17
- Academic departments8
- Undergraduate studentsMore than 1,800
- Full-time faculty155
- Research expendituresNearly $32M (2025)
Majors and departments
What can I actually major in?
There are 17 bachelor’s degrees to choose from, spread across 8 departments. You will find all the disciplines you would expect — civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, computer science, bioengineering, materials science, industrial and systems engineering — and a handful you might not.
The ones people tend not to expect are the crossover degrees: Computer Science and Business, Integrated Business and Engineering, the Integrated Degree in Engineering, Arts and Sciences, Arts and Engineering, and Applied Science. They are for students who want engineering plus something else, and they are real degrees rather than minors bolted on.
Which departments make up the College?
Eight of them: Bioengineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics.
Each one runs its own faculty, labs and degree requirements, so once you have narrowed things down it is worth going straight to the department. More about the College
Is the program accredited?
Yes — though it is worth knowing how accreditation works. ABET accredits individual programs, not whole colleges, so a degree is accredited on its own terms.
The interdisciplinary degrees sit outside that framework by design, because they are not conventional engineering programs. If accreditation matters for the licence or career you have in mind, check the specific major page before you apply.
Do I need to know my major before I apply?
No, and most students do not.
That is largely what the first year is for. FYRE rotates students through several engineering areas so they can find what interests them before committing, which is a more reliable way to choose than reading course catalogs at seventeen.
If you want to talk it through with someone, the Rossin advising team answers at rossinadvise@lehigh.edu.
The first year
What is FYRE?
FYRE stands for First Year Rossin Engineering, and it is how the College starts you off. Instead of spending your first year on maths and physics and waiting until junior year to touch an engineering problem, you build the foundations while working on real projects.
The spine of it is ENGR 095, a three-credit course, plus a set of seven-week modules that move you through different engineering areas. You get to try things before you commit to them.
Will I be in FYRE if I start next year?
Possibly, but not certainly, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. FYRE started as a pilot in 2025 and is being rolled out to the whole College by 2028–2029.
So ask your admissions counsellor or the advising team what the first year looks like for your specific entry year — the answer is changing as the rollout proceeds.
Will professors teach me, or teaching assistants?
Professors. The College has 155 full-time faculty, and more than 77% of them are tenured or on the tenure track — these are career academics, not temporary hires.
Roughly 30% hold a Fellow title from a body such as the National Academy of Engineering, IEEE, ASME, ASCE, AIMBE or NAI. Teaching assistants support courses; they do not run them.
Getting in
How do I apply as an undergraduate?
You apply to Lehigh University through the Office of Admissions and name engineering as your intended course of study. There is no separate application to the Rossin College.
Do I have to submit SAT or ACT scores?
No. Lehigh is test-optional, and not just for a year or two — the policy has been adopted indefinitely. You decide whether submitting scores helps your case.
If you do send them, the highest section scores across test dates are what count, whether that is a superscored SAT or a superscored ACT.
What about my AP credits?
It depends on the department and the course. Departments set their own standards for accepting Advanced Placement credit, so there is no single college-wide rule we can give you honestly.
Check with the department that owns the course, or look it up in the Lehigh course catalog.
Learning by doing
How do internships work here?
They are flexible, which is the point. During the fall or spring an internship is usually part time — roughly 10 to 20 hours a week, local or remote. Over the summer it may be part time or full time, depending on the employer and the role.
Finding one is student-driven rather than assigned, but you are not doing it alone: the Center for Career and Professional Development works with you on the search, and there is an engineering career coach in the College.
Can I get course credit for an internship?
Yes. You can ask to enrol in ENGR 160 Engineering Internship or ENGR 200 Engineering Work Experience and earn academic credit for the placement.
Eligibility requirements, credits, fees and registration deadlines are all published by the College. See the details
Can undergraduates do real research?
Yes, and they are paid for it. Rossin Research Scholars pairs undergraduates with PhD student mentors on yearlong research projects.
There is also the David and Lorraine Freed Undergraduate Research Symposium every spring, where undergraduates present their work to a panel of academic and industry judges — which is rather more demanding, and more useful, than it sounds.
What can I build outside class?
Lehigh Racing, which now has an electric vehicle team alongside the combustion one. The Lehigh University Rocketry Association. And the SWARMS Lab Club, which does aerial robotics.
These are student-run and they build things that have to work, which is a different kind of learning from coursework.
Afterwards
What do graduates end up doing?
92% of the Class of 2025 were employed, continuing their education, or in military or volunteer service within six months of graduating. That is a university-wide figure rather than an engineering-only one, so treat it as the shape of things rather than a promise about your major.
Career support starts in your first semester and runs on a four-year cycle through Lehigh’s Center for Career and Professional Development — it is structured rather than something you go looking for in senior year.
Can I add a master’s in a fifth year?
Yes — that is the 4+1. You can count up to 12 credits taken as an undergraduate toward the master’s, and take graduate-level courses in your junior and senior years while still paying undergraduate tuition for them.
You need a cumulative GPA of at least 3.0 to declare it. Combined with the Rossin Alumni Scholarship, it works out around 40% cheaper than a master’s taken the conventional way.
Graduate study
What is on offer at graduate level?
Four routes, depending on how much you want to take on: 11 PhD programs, 21 master’s programs, 12 graduate certificates, and non-degree study if you only want a course or two.
They run across the same eight departments as the undergraduate degrees, so the faculty teaching them are the faculty doing the research.
Do PhD students get funded?
Every first-year PhD student is funded from College sources through the Rossin Doctoral Support Program — which matters more than it sounds, because the money does not depend on an individual supervisor’s grant. You are not hostage to one professor’s funding cycle in your first year.
How hard is it to get into the PhD programs?
Hard. Doctoral admission runs under 10% selectivity, and the funding guarantee is part of why — the College admits the number of students it can support properly rather than the number who apply.
Is the GRE required?
No, and not merely optional — it is not considered at all for any Rossin College graduate program. Submitting scores will not help you, and leaving them out will not count against you.
What goes into a graduate application?
One online application covers every level, whatever you are applying for. You will need official transcripts, with an English translation if they are not in English; a statement of purpose; letters of recommendation, typically three; and a résumé or CV.
The application fee is $50 USD.
Can I study part time, online or while working?
Often, yes. Several programs are delivered on campus, fully online or as a blend of the two, and the College is expanding online, hybrid and certificate options aimed specifically at working professionals.
Delivery varies by program rather than being set college-wide, so check the individual program page — it is the one detail worth confirming before you apply.
What is a graduate certificate for?
Building a specific technical skill without committing to a full degree. Certificates suit people who want to move into a new area, sharpen something they already do, or test whether a subject is worth a master’s before signing up for one.
There are 12 of them, and they go through the same online application as every other program.
Can I take a graduate course without enrolling in a degree?
Yes. Qualified applicants can be admitted specifically to take one or more graduate-level courses without seeking a degree — useful if you need a particular subject for work, or want to see how you get on before committing.
Who can I talk to about graduate study?
Angelo Lambroschino is the graduate recruiting manager and the right first contact. You can also book a conversation with a current graduate student, which tends to answer the questions a prospectus cannot.
Research
How much research happens here?
Nearly $32 million in research expenditures in 2025, and the enterprise grew 41% between 2021 and 2025.
Lehigh holds an R1 Carnegie Classification — the designation for universities with the highest level of research activity. For an undergraduate, the practical consequence is that the labs doing that work are the same labs you can get into.
What are the research institutes?
Three of them, each deliberately cross-disciplinary: Functional Materials and Devices (I-FMD), Data, Intelligent Systems and Computation (I-DISC), and Cyber Physical Infrastructure and Energy (I-CPIE).
Their job is to incubate the large, multi-university centers that no single department could host on its own.
More detail, one level down
This page is the front door. Most areas keep a fuller set of questions of their own, written by the people who run them.
Read, watch and listen
The quickest way to work out whether you would like it here is to watch what the place actually does week to week.
Research findings, student and faculty achievement, campus events — the running record of the College, updated continuously.
The College’s own magazine on engineering research and educational innovation, published twice a year. Subscribe free.
More than thirty episodes of Lehigh engineers explaining their work, from regrowing cartilage to the James Webb Space Telescope. On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and @RossinPodcast.
The College e-newsletter: student, faculty and alumni achievement, events and programmes, straight to your inbox.
First Year Rossin Engineering keeps its own accounts too, and posts the student project work: FYRE on social media.
Asked elsewhere
Some of what you want to know belongs to the University rather than the College. Rather than copy figures here and let them go stale, these go straight to the office that keeps them current.
On international students, the figure people usually want is a university one: Lehigh has close to 1,000 international students, from 87 countries.
Still stuck?
Thinking about an undergraduate degree
Advising, majors and course selection
Thinking about graduate study
Meet the graduate recruiting team
The College
P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science
19 Memorial Drive West
Bethlehem, PA 18015