my-3-sons. I am in MA and just went through this with S2, a complete turnaround from son1 who had a more typical major in mind. Engineering is really different, from what I have learned. Most engineering programs are located in large private or state universities (I believe it is costly to keep the equipment, professors, etc. that good engineering programs need), or in strong, technical science/engineering schools while a few are in "LAC style" settings, but not many. You must set foot on a few campuses to help your son decide if he prefers the technical style school, the very large campus or maybe wants the more LAC style. The technical schools, RPI, WPI, MIT, etc. have a very different feel, different student body, for the most part balanced towards males (maybe not MIT) and are more focused on engineering/sciences. They can offer great liasons, projects, internships, equipment/labs, professors, research opportunities, etc. But, the social setting is different. The larger state and private programs (Northeastern, UMich, UMass) offer bigger student bodies and more diversity of opportunity outside of engineering, a consideration if you think he might not stay in engineering or if he has many interests outside of engineering, but they are quite large schools for the most part. You will also find engineering at the Ivies. Some programs are quite small and attract (as we heard repeatedly) many pre-med students, some students who want to go into IBanking and about 1/3 who want to be engineers. The larger, broader engineering programs like Columbia and Cornell attract a lot of top students from around the world and are very strong engineering programs for engineers.
Does your son have a particular area of engineering he is interested in? Not all schools have all types of engineering so you might want to be mindful of that. Some may have mechanical but not aerospace, etc. Is your son interested in working right after his bachelor's or is he more interested in pursuing a graduate degree (research oriented bachelor's). Some schools are better feeders to industry and some are better feeders for graduate schools and some do a little of both. You might ask what percentage of students go to work after graduation, to graduate school, etc. If he is interested in graduate programs in engineering, he should find out where the students go on, typically - what kinds of schools. Nearly all schools we looked at assured us that they were ABET accredited. With ABET accreditation, the curriculum required is the same across all schools even though bigger schools with more engineering concentrations have broader curriculum choices. Some schools have a very minimal program or a more general engineering program (Swarthmore is one that emphasizes a general engineering degree,).
Some of the best engineering schools are not the schools one reads about most on CC. For example, Georgia Tech is a very highly regarded engineering school but certainly not high on USNews ranking. You have to leave the CC view of "best schools" behind a bit. You can check the USNew & World engineering rankings although there is another ranking (can't remember the name) that many here felt was more valid re: engineering. Schools will vary in their rankings based on the type of engineering (mechanical versus chemical, for example).
You might ask your son what he is expecting to do at college. The technical schools have fewer clubs, activities, etc or at least less diverse ones.
Classicrockerdad and a few others answered some questions for me about how recruiters viewed students from different schools. If you cannot find those posts, let me know, I might have them.
Oh, some of the smaller, more LAC schools we found in the NE area included Tufts, Villanova, Lehigh and Lafayette but two of them do not offer more than a Bachelor's degree in engineering.
My son refused to apply to some we thought he should have. In the beginning he was sure he would attend the same school his older cousins attended - until he visited. I strongly recommend that you visit - they are all so different. Take advantage of the engineering tour days - most schools have them. You will see the facilities, maybe even meet some of the professors, or the dean of engineering. For smaller programs, don't wait for the summer - we visited one school in the summer and had to peek through the window in the door to see the facilities - yet it was an all engineering school. We did not look too far beyond PA but there are obviously many good choices outside of the NE area.
Another is to view the data sets carefully as opposed to the combined admission rates for gender specific information. The admissions statistics for female applicants are often quite different than for men so averages can be deceiving. There is an interesting website where you can search out some of this information:
http://www.asee.org/publications/profiles/search.cfm
Good luck. This is just a Mom's experience with engineering. You should certainly get some input from engineers, some students, and walk on some campuses, definitely do the engineering tours/presentations. I sat through one Dean's presentation and suddenly wanted to become an engineer. It's been an interesting experience!