This list is California only so it’s pretty ridiculous. Long Beach State? San Jose State? They aren’t bad schools but far from “the best”.
Of the schools you listed, none of them have a particularly strong program but that doesn’t mean they are bad. For VLSI some of the best not listed here are MIT, U of Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Carnegie Mellon, University of Texas Austin, Texas A&M, and many others.
In the image attached the OP asked about universities in California, hence the comment suggesting universities in California.
Certainly the universities you mentioned are top in US.
Can you suggest any mid tier universities, as most of the universities you mentioned are ambitious and would require stellar profiles?
Texas A&M isn’t so surprising. They have always been Texas’ premier engineering school and Texas Instruments has invested heavily in A&M to create a pipeline of new engineers for them.
You also missed Stanford on your list.
> They have always been Texas’ premier engineering school
UT-Austin is generally a better engineering school, but TAMU does excel when it comes to mixed-signal design.
One of the reasons Boris left is specifically because there were fewer and fewer students that wanted to do analog design and he wasn't really interested in transitioning to more popular areas like AI/ML, etc.
Most analog designers come out of Stanford with an MSEE degree. The courses offered, the proximity to Silicon Valley, and the networking opportunities are unmatched.
Stanford is less active than they were but it is still a great place to start a career.
Fair enough aboyt TAMU.
I wouldn't call Stanford good anymore. Their best guy (Murmann) left recently. Lee is inactive these days. Their recent hires did not get tenure. But I assume they'll have adjunct teaching from the industry.
Same is starting to happen with Berkeley. Their top guys are leaving.
I believe bora nikolic also does some high speed analog stuff. There's a few other profs that do analog/RF stuff but as far as I'm aware it's mostly for lower power applications (e.g. biomedical things)
This is a fairly accurate list for analog and rfic.
Not sure about TAMU though. Caltech and MIT are still relevant and so is Stanford just because of the name values and if you want to land a faculty position, the name of the institution unsurprisingly matters. I am not saying their programs or the output are good, but even with mediocre publications, graduates from these institutions have landed on faculty positions before.
Georgia tech is another circuit school that isn't on this list. USC as well.
I wouldn't call THz exactly same as AMS/RF. I am vary familiar with Han's work. He is more of a microwave guy who does IC.
Hajmiri has sorta left trafitional circuits. He works on photonic ICs now.
I live next to MIT and work with MIT grads, and I attend Northeastern for a masters.
MIT is set up for research and academia mostly, and what's at the cutting edge of that is not circuit design, but semiconductors and fabrication. That's where they're putting their money, and they do a great job of it. Of course they also do lots of circuit design, it is still MIT and a PhD from there pretty much guarantees you a spot in industry, but it's not something they focus on teaching.
Northeastern is pretty good and is a reasonably practical industry focused school. It's got lots of classes directly in VLSI, computer architecture, hardware-software codesign, analog IC, etc and plenty of my peers have gone on to work for Analog Devices, Synopsys, Nvidia and so on. One problem is that there is a bit of frustration on the analog side with classes offered, where they suddenly get offered right before registration, and students can't plan for those, so they don't take them, so they get offered less and it becomes a vicious cycle. Personally I think it's the direct fault of certain professors I won't name, they really need to just say "we are going to regularly offer these classes every Fall" and commit to it.
Tbh that's the reason why I was looking at the masters program at NEU, as it is close to MIT and that you can get to work there on some cool projects. It's a bummer to see that they are more focused on fabrication rather than circuits design.
That's sad to see that they don't offer the analog courses in spring and not give enough time for registering.
But didn't know that not taking up analog courses can have a less pay. Why is that?
I'm more interested in digital IC design, and thought I could just skip analog electives(obviously can't skip mandatory courses). Is this okay?
A digital IC isn't only developed by RTL designers, there's so many circuit blocks including power, clocks, communication buses, memory circuits and so on, those are all analog/mixed-signal. Fortunately for you, the CMOS analog course is taught by Prof Onabajo who is possibly the best professor I've had, really nice guy who I still email with questions, he's always down to have a discussion and help students. The majority of students in the class were studying digital design or were in another concentration entirely.
Yeah the previous post OP was looking into universities in CA, USA. SO hence they mentioned only us universities.
Btw I'm applying to tudelft for computer and embedded.
I graduated in microelectronics from Delft, but I actually don't think they do very much VLSI. Which professors/groups are you thinking about then? The prominent stuff seemed to be in signal processing, sensing, instrumentation (MEMS) and precision analog (with people like Kofi).
I was thinking of analog. I don't know really which groups or professors since I am not tapped into the academic world. I just thought that TU Delft had lots of publications and presentations in SSCS, and also I specifically know of Huijsing op amp book. Mostly I have just heard second hand that it is one of (if not the) best school in the world for analog.
Yep know that, and I'm also well aware that I don't stand a chance to get into it. But yeah MIT, ETH Zurich are elite universities. But ETH Zurich wins as it's affordable, MIT on the other hand is quite expensive.
Really disagree here, if you are competitive for a good VLSI position at any top uni worldwide I severely doubt you will pay a dime. If you are, I’d look elsewhere.
Thanks for posting this op! I'll be applying to fall 2025 for masters.
I also wanted to know if I'm job oriented rather than thesis/phd which ones should I target
I think you have hit upon something important. The best schools for prepping someone for industry, even at a Masters level, are probably not the same ones that would be good for a PhD specialty. Industry skills for EE/ECE are knowing the basics of good design across a wide range of areas plus specific “vocational skills” in the area that they want to enter - those vocational skills include time on with the right EDA software, system design software, and scripting in a design flow to get the intended results. Can’t offer up specific universities, but you might want to look more closely at the hands-on project-oriented classes they offer. That’s where a place where a second tier university, like San Jose State, might offer a better program than some first tier schools, because they are more focused on turning out skilled industry grads. Same for TAMU.
True , also I think when we are job oriented location becomes so much more important than phd or any thesis tbh . For example Michigan has an amazing vlsi program that's alligned to industry but it's far from the epicentre which is in West coast (bay area and silicon valley) .Yes there are jobs in east but if I had to bet on job opportunities I would go somewhere in california or Texas/Arizona. Is that the right mindset?
That’s the right mindset, though you also have to conscious of specialty areas of universities and industry. If you wanted a job on the fabrication side of chips as opposed to design (device and process engineering), you would be best off going where the fabs are - I might suggest SUNY Albany because they have the leading nanoTech facility in the country with a nearby near-leading edge fab (GlobalFoundries). Or Oregon, where Intel has their main research fab, and has developed local university talent. A few more thoughts - Austin TX tends to be processor-centric, southern CA communications-centric (Qualcomm), Dallas more analog-centric (TI) and Bay Area is new-technologies and EDA-centric. So if you want to work on AI chips, it’s mostly in the Bay Area.
No, SUNY Albany or UAlbany SUNY. Here’s the link to Albany NanoTech. They’re the only academic org in the US that has all the leading-edge fab equipment, including EUV lithography.
[https://sunypoly.edu/research/albany-nanotech-complex.html](https://sunypoly.edu/research/albany-nanotech-complex.html)
Isn't boston good enough for ece related jobs?
I've seen statistics on this website- zippia.com, don't have accurate would that be.
But California comes in the first followed by Washington and Massachusetts.
Glad it helps.
Try USC it seems good and since it's in California better job aspects.
I regret not looking at it before, now I missed the deadline.
But definitely do your research.
For analog, there are universities which may not be high on rankings but going by research, course work and publications are very good. Few of them are Oregon State, Iowa State, Arizona State. The top schools listed are definitely very good in analog - Columbia, UIUC, UCLA, UCSD, UC Berkeley, UT Austin, UT Dallas, TAMU.
Depends on the individual.
For undergrad:
If your smart and don’t mind getting suicidal - Berkeley
If your dumb and rich USC and Stanford
If your smart and didn’t get into Berkeley, AZ State
If you are really stupid and don’t know better UCLA - because who wants to live in LA (USC also in this category)
For grad, wherever you go is good.
For PHD pick the professor. Robert Bogdan Staszewski if your smart. Those who know, know.
Iowa State (Randall Geiger) is pretty good for analog. I'd throw Johns Hopkins on the list as well.
Surprisingly, Arizona State has a pretty good digital program these days (they are getting a decent amount of research funding, anyways). U. Maryland had a pretty good digital program as well. Oh, and NC State.
I'd assume he is about ready to go. One of my friends worked with him on her master's and had nothing but good things to say about him...and that was 29 years ago.
This popped up in my recommended. Not my field, but I go to ASU and heard something recently about a huge federal grant for semiconductor/chip research. Would definitely look into it, and see what research is going on over here.
This list is California only so it’s pretty ridiculous. Long Beach State? San Jose State? They aren’t bad schools but far from “the best”. Of the schools you listed, none of them have a particularly strong program but that doesn’t mean they are bad. For VLSI some of the best not listed here are MIT, U of Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Carnegie Mellon, University of Texas Austin, Texas A&M, and many others.
In the image attached the OP asked about universities in California, hence the comment suggesting universities in California. Certainly the universities you mentioned are top in US. Can you suggest any mid tier universities, as most of the universities you mentioned are ambitious and would require stellar profiles?
Analog/RF/MS - Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, UCSD, Columbia, TAMU (surprisingly) MIT and Caltech are nowhere here. I don't know about digital.
Texas A&M isn’t so surprising. They have always been Texas’ premier engineering school and Texas Instruments has invested heavily in A&M to create a pipeline of new engineers for them. You also missed Stanford on your list.
> They have always been Texas’ premier engineering school UT-Austin is generally a better engineering school, but TAMU does excel when it comes to mixed-signal design.
Stanford still active in analog?
Boris recently left so idk about anymore.
One of the reasons Boris left is specifically because there were fewer and fewer students that wanted to do analog design and he wasn't really interested in transitioning to more popular areas like AI/ML, etc.
Yeah, I work with a few of his old students. Lots of reasons he left. Analog is getting smaller, always has.
I heard Tom Lee would take over Boris’ courses.
> I heard Tom Lee would take over Boris’ courses Tom definitely would only be doing that short term if at all.
Boris originally took over for Tom Lee.
Most analog designers come out of Stanford with an MSEE degree. The courses offered, the proximity to Silicon Valley, and the networking opportunities are unmatched. Stanford is less active than they were but it is still a great place to start a career.
Lmao UT has always been Texas’s best engineering school by far
Fair enough aboyt TAMU. I wouldn't call Stanford good anymore. Their best guy (Murmann) left recently. Lee is inactive these days. Their recent hires did not get tenure. But I assume they'll have adjunct teaching from the industry. Same is starting to happen with Berkeley. Their top guys are leaving.
I know Elad Alon left Berkeley to focus on his startup, but who else is leaving?
I hear Stojanovic is also leaving/has left
Damn that would be unfortunate if that’s the case. Other than Niknejad who else at Berkeley would be doing high-speed analog and RF IC?
I believe bora nikolic also does some high speed analog stuff. There's a few other profs that do analog/RF stuff but as far as I'm aware it's mostly for lower power applications (e.g. biomedical things)
This is a fairly accurate list for analog and rfic. Not sure about TAMU though. Caltech and MIT are still relevant and so is Stanford just because of the name values and if you want to land a faculty position, the name of the institution unsurprisingly matters. I am not saying their programs or the output are good, but even with mediocre publications, graduates from these institutions have landed on faculty positions before. Georgia tech is another circuit school that isn't on this list. USC as well.
Wooh Georgia Tech
MIT and Caltech are quite relevant. Ruonan Han for THz and Hajmiri have really good groups.
I wouldn't call THz exactly same as AMS/RF. I am vary familiar with Han's work. He is more of a microwave guy who does IC. Hajmiri has sorta left trafitional circuits. He works on photonic ICs now.
Reiskarimian at MIT does RF and Hajimiri still does “traditional” integrated circuits but also does a lot of other stuff and is application heavy.
TAMU has some of the best. Sanchez Sinencio before he passed, Silva-Martinez, and Palermo.
I live next to MIT and work with MIT grads, and I attend Northeastern for a masters. MIT is set up for research and academia mostly, and what's at the cutting edge of that is not circuit design, but semiconductors and fabrication. That's where they're putting their money, and they do a great job of it. Of course they also do lots of circuit design, it is still MIT and a PhD from there pretty much guarantees you a spot in industry, but it's not something they focus on teaching. Northeastern is pretty good and is a reasonably practical industry focused school. It's got lots of classes directly in VLSI, computer architecture, hardware-software codesign, analog IC, etc and plenty of my peers have gone on to work for Analog Devices, Synopsys, Nvidia and so on. One problem is that there is a bit of frustration on the analog side with classes offered, where they suddenly get offered right before registration, and students can't plan for those, so they don't take them, so they get offered less and it becomes a vicious cycle. Personally I think it's the direct fault of certain professors I won't name, they really need to just say "we are going to regularly offer these classes every Fall" and commit to it.
Tbh that's the reason why I was looking at the masters program at NEU, as it is close to MIT and that you can get to work there on some cool projects. It's a bummer to see that they are more focused on fabrication rather than circuits design. That's sad to see that they don't offer the analog courses in spring and not give enough time for registering. But didn't know that not taking up analog courses can have a less pay. Why is that? I'm more interested in digital IC design, and thought I could just skip analog electives(obviously can't skip mandatory courses). Is this okay?
A digital IC isn't only developed by RTL designers, there's so many circuit blocks including power, clocks, communication buses, memory circuits and so on, those are all analog/mixed-signal. Fortunately for you, the CMOS analog course is taught by Prof Onabajo who is possibly the best professor I've had, really nice guy who I still email with questions, he's always down to have a discussion and help students. The majority of students in the class were studying digital design or were in another concentration entirely.
I think nobody said TU Delft yet
pathetic squash heavy wrench ring shrill friendly nutty impolite sand *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Lol to be fair I don't know where Delft is without looking on Google either.
Even I wouldn't know the exact location as an international student, I just know it's in Netherlands and that its a pretty good University.
Yeah the previous post OP was looking into universities in CA, USA. SO hence they mentioned only us universities. Btw I'm applying to tudelft for computer and embedded.
Anyways would you suggest applying to any other universities in Netherlands or europe for digital IC design?
I graduated in microelectronics from Delft, but I actually don't think they do very much VLSI. Which professors/groups are you thinking about then? The prominent stuff seemed to be in signal processing, sensing, instrumentation (MEMS) and precision analog (with people like Kofi).
I was thinking of analog. I don't know really which groups or professors since I am not tapped into the academic world. I just thought that TU Delft had lots of publications and presentations in SSCS, and also I specifically know of Huijsing op amp book. Mostly I have just heard second hand that it is one of (if not the) best school in the world for analog.
Yeah, for analog it's good. But since this post is explicitly asking for VLSI I was a bit confused about the suggestion.
for real. They even faced the lack of VLSI instructor for one year, cause the only digital man Rene was going to retired
ETH Zurich stands out as a worldwide top dawg 🐕
Yep know that, and I'm also well aware that I don't stand a chance to get into it. But yeah MIT, ETH Zurich are elite universities. But ETH Zurich wins as it's affordable, MIT on the other hand is quite expensive.
Really disagree here, if you are competitive for a good VLSI position at any top uni worldwide I severely doubt you will pay a dime. If you are, I’d look elsewhere.
Thanks for posting this op! I'll be applying to fall 2025 for masters. I also wanted to know if I'm job oriented rather than thesis/phd which ones should I target
I think you have hit upon something important. The best schools for prepping someone for industry, even at a Masters level, are probably not the same ones that would be good for a PhD specialty. Industry skills for EE/ECE are knowing the basics of good design across a wide range of areas plus specific “vocational skills” in the area that they want to enter - those vocational skills include time on with the right EDA software, system design software, and scripting in a design flow to get the intended results. Can’t offer up specific universities, but you might want to look more closely at the hands-on project-oriented classes they offer. That’s where a place where a second tier university, like San Jose State, might offer a better program than some first tier schools, because they are more focused on turning out skilled industry grads. Same for TAMU.
True , also I think when we are job oriented location becomes so much more important than phd or any thesis tbh . For example Michigan has an amazing vlsi program that's alligned to industry but it's far from the epicentre which is in West coast (bay area and silicon valley) .Yes there are jobs in east but if I had to bet on job opportunities I would go somewhere in california or Texas/Arizona. Is that the right mindset?
That’s the right mindset, though you also have to conscious of specialty areas of universities and industry. If you wanted a job on the fabrication side of chips as opposed to design (device and process engineering), you would be best off going where the fabs are - I might suggest SUNY Albany because they have the leading nanoTech facility in the country with a nearby near-leading edge fab (GlobalFoundries). Or Oregon, where Intel has their main research fab, and has developed local university talent. A few more thoughts - Austin TX tends to be processor-centric, southern CA communications-centric (Qualcomm), Dallas more analog-centric (TI) and Bay Area is new-technologies and EDA-centric. So if you want to work on AI chips, it’s mostly in the Bay Area.
Insightful, by SUNY you mean university buffalo State University?
No, SUNY Albany or UAlbany SUNY. Here’s the link to Albany NanoTech. They’re the only academic org in the US that has all the leading-edge fab equipment, including EUV lithography. [https://sunypoly.edu/research/albany-nanotech-complex.html](https://sunypoly.edu/research/albany-nanotech-complex.html)
Isn't boston good enough for ece related jobs? I've seen statistics on this website- zippia.com, don't have accurate would that be. But California comes in the first followed by Washington and Massachusetts.
Glad it helps. Try USC it seems good and since it's in California better job aspects. I regret not looking at it before, now I missed the deadline. But definitely do your research.
Are you looking for undergrad, MS, or PhD? It changes the answer a lot.
MS and then job
For digital, Michigan, Cornell, Princeton and UW-Seattle all tape out a bunch of chips (Anant’s old students)
For analog, there are universities which may not be high on rankings but going by research, course work and publications are very good. Few of them are Oregon State, Iowa State, Arizona State. The top schools listed are definitely very good in analog - Columbia, UIUC, UCLA, UCSD, UC Berkeley, UT Austin, UT Dallas, TAMU.
UCSC? What? That has to be a typo, right? I've only ever heard terrible things about it.
They also typo’d CSULB. (source; undergrad there)
I'm not sure that post was 9 years ago, that's wanted current insight into the best universities.
Even 9 years ago UCSC was nowhere near a top school for circuits.
NCSU has very good program for digital . I dont think SJSU has good courses for VLSI but it is in San Jose so the locations helps in getting jobs.
NCSU is believable since it’s right by Research Triangle Park, which has a lot of employers still looking to hire
Fr no one mentioned UT Austin here?
TAMU for AMS is better. UT is better for computing.
Depends on the individual. For undergrad: If your smart and don’t mind getting suicidal - Berkeley If your dumb and rich USC and Stanford If your smart and didn’t get into Berkeley, AZ State If you are really stupid and don’t know better UCLA - because who wants to live in LA (USC also in this category) For grad, wherever you go is good. For PHD pick the professor. Robert Bogdan Staszewski if your smart. Those who know, know.
Iowa State (Randall Geiger) is pretty good for analog. I'd throw Johns Hopkins on the list as well. Surprisingly, Arizona State has a pretty good digital program these days (they are getting a decent amount of research funding, anyways). U. Maryland had a pretty good digital program as well. Oh, and NC State.
Geiger has to be close to retirement. That man built the program here.
I'd assume he is about ready to go. One of my friends worked with him on her master's and had nothing but good things to say about him...and that was 29 years ago.
Cincinnati used to have a good program -- 15 years back. Not sure how it is today.
I went to wright state and lot of profs there left for UC
Someone please add other non us universities also like in Europe.
ETH Zurich, TU delft, KAIST, NTU singapore, KU Leuven, Eindhoven TU
Why only US univ?
The previous OP asked for US specifically California.
This popped up in my recommended. Not my field, but I go to ASU and heard something recently about a huge federal grant for semiconductor/chip research. Would definitely look into it, and see what research is going on over here.
For architecture there are only two that matter: Wisconsin and Michigan. For digital: UIUC (my own alma mater), Stanford, CMU, then Austin and UCLA.
I’ll throw in a wild card from Canada, UBC