University of Pennsylvania SEAS Undergraduate Programs Guide

Penn Engineering Overview

The University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science (Penn Engineering or SEAS) traces its origins to 1852 when it was established as the School of Mines, Arts and Manufactures, making it one of the earliest engineering schools in America. Penn itself was founded by Benjamin Franklin, described as “America’s first scientist and engineer,” and the engineering school embodies Franklin’s pragmatic, interdisciplinary approach to knowledge. As an Ivy League institution, Penn was a pioneer in interdisciplinary education, and SEAS continues this tradition by offering engineering programs that seamlessly integrate with Penn’s world-class schools of business, medicine, law, and liberal arts.

Penn Engineering offers 10 undergraduate majors leading to either the Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) or the Bachelor of Applied Science (BAS) degree, both requiring a minimum of 40 course units. What distinguishes Penn Engineering from many peer institutions is its deep integration with the broader university. Students can combine engineering study with courses at the Wharton School of Business, the Annenberg School for Communication, the School of Design, and the College of Arts and Sciences, creating educational pathways that prepare them for the increasingly interdisciplinary demands of 21st-century engineering careers.

Every major at Penn Engineering includes a substantial senior design project, often spanning the full academic year, where students apply their accumulated knowledge to real-world engineering challenges. These capstone projects frequently involve collaboration with industry partners and serve as powerful demonstrations of students’ engineering capabilities for prospective employers and graduate programs.

BSE vs BAS Degree Paths

Penn Engineering offers two distinct undergraduate degree types, each designed to serve different student goals and career aspirations. The Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) is Penn’s flagship professional engineering degree, providing rigorous preparation for careers in professional engineering, computer science, or digital media design. The BSE curriculum emphasizes deep technical mastery within a chosen engineering discipline, with structured sequences of courses that build systematically from fundamental principles to advanced applications.

The Bachelor of Applied Science (BAS) combines a broader applied science education with specialized interest in engineering and technology, offering more curricular flexibility than the BSE. BAS program options include Biomedical Science, Cognitive Science, Computational Biology, Computer Science, and individualized programs that students design in consultation with faculty advisors. Both degrees require 40 course units, but the BAS allows students to allocate more of those units to non-engineering coursework, making it ideal for students who want to combine engineering knowledge with deep study in another field.

In some departments, such as Bioengineering, both the BSE and BAS curricula are identical for the first two years, allowing students to switch between degree paths as they gain clarity about their goals. Pre-medical students may choose either the BSE or BAS, depending on whether they prefer a more technical or a more flexible path to medical school. If you are evaluating engineering degree structures across institutions, our guide to Northeastern University graduate engineering provides perspective on how graduate programs build on undergraduate foundations.

Bioengineering

Penn’s Department of Bioengineering sits at the confluence of medicine and engineering, applying principles from electrical, mechanical, chemical, and materials engineering to advance healthcare and biological sciences. Penn is recognized as a pioneer in this field, and the department’s position within an Ivy League university with a world-renowned medical school creates extraordinary research and clinical collaboration opportunities. Career paths for bioengineering graduates include technical design, basic and applied research, health professions, the medical device industry, business, investing, intellectual property law, government, and regulation of patents and medical devices.

The BSE in Bioengineering is a fully accredited professional engineering degree, while the BAS in Biomedical Sciences offers a more flexible curriculum for students with broader interests. The first-year curriculum includes Calculus, General Chemistry, Physics, and the two-semester Introduction to Bioengineering sequence. By senior year, students are engaged in year-long Senior Design projects alongside advanced electives in areas like cell engineering, biotransport, and specialized bioengineering topics. The curriculum is carefully structured to build competence in biomechanics, biomaterials, systems and signals, and engineering physiology before students tackle their capstone design challenges.

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Penn’s Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department, founded in 1893, combines engineering principles with concepts from chemistry, physics, and biology. The addition of “Biomolecular” to the department’s name in 2002 reflected the growing importance of molecular biology, cellular mechanobiology, and genetic engineering in the field. The department offers a flexible curriculum that integrates theory, problem-solving techniques, and experimental work, with small class sizes that encourage meaningful professor-student interaction.

The curriculum progresses from foundational courses in chemistry, physics, and calculus through core chemical engineering subjects including Material and Energy Balances, Thermodynamics of Fluids, Fluid Mechanics, Heat and Mass Transport, and Separation Processes. The senior year features the hallmark process design sequence, where students tackle real-world design challenges with input from industrial colleagues at local chemical and pharmaceutical companies. Graduates pursue careers in energy storage and conversion, chemical and petrochemical processing, biotechnology, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and environmental remediation, with many advancing to leadership roles in industry, academia, and the public sector.

Computer Science and Computer Engineering

Penn Engineering offers two distinct computing-focused majors that reflect different approaches to the field. The BSE in Computer Science provides in-depth education in the conceptual foundations of computer science and complex software and hardware systems, exploring connections between CS and other disciplines while combining computing principles with strong mathematics, science, and liberal arts education. The curriculum covers everything from Programming Languages and Automata Theory to Operating Systems and Algorithms, with extensive elective options in artificial intelligence, graphics, mobile systems, and networked systems.

The BSE in Computer Engineering, offered jointly by the departments of Computer and Information Science (CIS) and Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE), combines the study of automated information processing and control with rigorous engineering design and optimization. This program links theory with practice through hands-on experiments and a yearlong senior design project, preparing students to design and engineer computer systems from hardware through software to worldwide-distributed systems, ensuring performance, energy-efficiency, reliability, and security. The curriculum uniquely integrates digital design, circuit-level systems, embedded computing, and software engineering in a cohesive sequence.

Digital Media Design

Penn’s Digital Media Design (DMD) program is one of the most distinctive engineering programs in American higher education. This elite BSE degree program, offered in collaboration between Penn Engineering, the Annenberg School for Communication, and the School of Design, accepts a small number of students each year and educates a new generation of experts in computer graphics who can collaborate effectively with both technologists and artists.

The program is built on three foundation areas: the computational basis for creating digital media imagery including simulation of 3D environments; an informed understanding of aesthetic aspects of digital media design; and the theory and research concerning viewers’ psychological responses to, and uses of, visual media as well as broader sociocultural effects. The curriculum integrates computer science courses (programming, algorithms, computer graphics, computer animation) with drawing, film studies, visual communications, information design, and psychology of perception. Students are required to complete one or two summers of real-world experience in a major multimedia industry, ensuring they graduate with both academic knowledge and practical industry exposure.

Electrical Engineering and Market and Social Systems Engineering

The BSE in Electrical Engineering offers a broad-based major covering all areas of the field with rigorous grounding in analytical and experimental foundations while allowing for individualized program design. Students study telecommunications and networks, imaging, remote sensing, microelectronics and integrated circuits, image and speech processing, robotics, video coding, neural computation, self-organizing systems, electromagnetics and photonics, electronic materials, silicon micromechanics, and nanofluidics. The curriculum builds from fundamental circuits and systems through probability, dynamic systems, and specialized area electives to a yearlong senior design project.

The Singh Program in Market and Social Systems Engineering (MKSE) is perhaps Penn Engineering’s most innovative offering — the world’s first course of study to fully integrate the disciplines needed to design and analyze complex networks that are reshaping society. MKSE combines computer science, systems engineering, and economics to examine how the Internet and technological networks create new economies and markets. The curriculum includes Networked Life, Market and Social Systems on the Internet, Game Theory, Theory of Networks, Algorithmic Game Theory, and Optimization of Systems, producing graduates who understand both the technical infrastructure and the economic and social dynamics of modern networked systems.

Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering

Penn’s Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) department stresses core principles — thermodynamics, structure, bonding, and phase transformations — while offering areas of concentration in nanoscale materials, biomaterials, polymers, ceramics, mechanical properties, and electronic materials. The program boasts advantages seldom found in other MSE programs: the opportunity to tailor the curriculum to individual interests, guaranteed research experience, and an excellent student-faculty ratio. The curriculum progresses from General Chemistry and Physics through quantum physics of materials, nanoscale materials, and self-assembly of soft materials to a yearlong senior design project focused on real-world materials challenges.

Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) provides basic groundwork in all aspects of mechanical engineering with curricular flexibility for elective programs, offering the broadest career opportunities among all engineering specialties. Elective areas include aeronautics, robotics, computers, electronics, automatic controls, and materials. Career fields span aerospace, automotive, electronics, energy, and robotics in positions ranging from research and development to design, manufacturing, field engineering, and marketing. The curriculum builds from statics and dynamics through fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, heat transfer, and vibrations to senior design projects that integrate all aspects of mechanical engineering knowledge. For a broader view of how engineering education prepares students for diverse careers, explore our guide on the MIT School of Engineering catalog.

Systems Science and Engineering

The field of systems engineering originated at Penn in 1953, giving the university a unique historical claim in this discipline. The BSE in Systems Science and Engineering (SSE) specializes in engineering the effectiveness of whole systems and synthesizing complex behaviors from simpler components. Unlike most engineering disciplines that are grounded in specific physical or biological sciences, SSE is grounded primarily in mathematics, computation, and design methodologies. The core curriculum focuses on mathematical modeling, simulation, and optimization of complex engineered systems.

Application areas for SSE graduates span an extraordinary range: computers, environmental organizations, manufacturing, logistics, transportation, information and telecommunications, economic and financial networks, healthcare, and military defense. The curriculum includes Electrical Systems and Circuits, Stochastic Systems Analysis and Simulation, Linear Algebra and Optimization, and advanced courses in areas determined by the student’s specialization. The senior project spans both semesters, providing a substantial capstone experience in systems design and analysis.

Penn Engineering’s commitment to the liberal arts is embedded in every major’s curriculum through required Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) electives distributed across all four years. This ensures that Penn engineers graduate not only with deep technical expertise but also with the critical thinking skills, communication abilities, and cultural awareness needed to lead in an increasingly complex global environment. If you are comparing professional and engineering programs, consider our guide on the George Washington University JD program for a law school perspective on professional education.