It’s going to be hard to find aeronautical engineering anywhere but the big schools. My son is coming from a very small private HS and looking at HUGE universities, so I was worried about that too, but after talking to students at the schools many of which came from the same background, we’re finding that after the first year or so that students tend to associate just with their department and have a tighter knit group and smaller classes. How about the honors programs within the college? They can sometimes give you the best of both worlds. Living learning communities are big around here too where you dorm with students of similar interests or academic pursuits which can make a big school seem smaller.
Some big schools do an awesome job of supporting students despite their size.