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my parents are willing to pay or at least work something out if the school is worth the extra cost **over the education I would receive at A&M or UT. **
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That’s just it. You’re not going to get a ChemE education that is “over” (better) than you will at TAMU or UT at those other schools. Those rankings aren’t an indication of more superior classroom education.
You live in Texas which is blessed with several schools that have quality ChemE progams. You also have related-internships and co-ops in your state. To pay more to go to UMinn or UDel or elsewhere is just wasting money.
I hate to see kids look at these silly rankings and think, “oh, I can’t go to my instate school because that other school has a higher ranking.”
Your future employer is not going to pay you more for going to UDel or UMinn or elsewhere. That employer is going to pay the new Texas Tech grad, UMinn grad, and UDel grad the SAME salary.
@Psata82 I really am doing my best to prepare for the work ahead. I am taking AP Chemistry and AP Calculus AB senior year, and I’ve downloaded an introductory course for chemical engineering that I will be taking to get a feel for everything. I think that when I make it through, even if it takes 5+ years, I will feel much better about stepping up to a challenge and being successful rather than backing down before giving it a chance. Worst case scenario I would just transfer knowing I gave it a shot.
Appreciate the reply, a good reality check always helps 
@mom2collegekids “If I had to answer my own questions I would say that the out of state schools I could likely get into are not worth going to over A&M or UT.” – I’m glad we’re on the same page!
Get your test scores up to at least a 30 ACT & shoot for UT
The US News ranking is total rubbish. One objective data point you can use to evaluate the quality of the Chemical engineering departments is the amount of money they spend in R&D. Sooner or later, the amount of R&D will influence quality of faculty, graduate students the school can attract and the amount of impressive research it will put out and that will lead to “prestige” and name recognition down the line. R&D spending is a strong leading predictor of which schools have strong Chemical Engineering departments.
For the Last 10 years, here is the list of schools that are spending the most dollars cumulatively in Chemical Engineering Research. Dollar Values are in Millions
- UT Austin $268,111
- Georgia Tech $259,440
- MIT $258,050
- Texas A&M $166,740
- Univ of Delaware $125,910
- Univ of Col(Boulder) $117,518
- Stanford $109,635
- Wisconsin $103,432
Two notes on this list. Berkeley’s Chemical Engineering sits in its Chemistry department. So while the official Berkeley estimate is only $71M, they may be spending a lot in the Chemistry department where their R&D is really high
This list is remarkably stable. Only Purdue has cracked this list at #7 ahead of Stanford if you take into account the last 5 years of R&D spending.
If you want to get a BS in Chemical Engineering, at a reasonable cost, you can’t do much better than UT Austin and Texas A&M. Their recruitment is also really strong
@darth1289 where did you get your funding for Chem E Research? It’s hard to believe U Delaware isn’t up there with their close affiliation with Dupont.
@“Erin’s Dad”
They are #5, ahead of Stanford. I would say that is good 
Research spending data is from
https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/profiles/site?method=search
I had to tally each school and sort manually
Thanks. I didn’t realize they had the info by major/field. I missed UDel being on the list.
The real question should be UT or TAMU? Go to UT if you can get in . Your current status are too low and cost is too high for most of the OOS engineering programs. For example, Michigan admitted median to engineering is 3.9 UW GPA and 33 ACT.
No OOS school (Cal, GT) are worth a price premium over UT or A&M.
I’d also consider where the petrochemical industry is located - that really makes UT or TAMU attractive with their networks after your have graduated.