Are you sure costs are similar? As I understand, if you are Canadian, your cost for UBC is something like $9,000 Canadian Dollars. That’s a big difference from going to UW or UF OOS/Foreign, which will cost you more than $30,000 USD for tuition alone.
And are you sure UF is harder to get into than UW’s Engineering school?
If you are looking for international reputation, check out the WSJ/Time world university ranking. UW stands out.