<p>You may want to look at GATech a little more closely. I never went there but I gathered the following from my research:
- it has an excellent reputation within the engineering circle
- it has a structured co-op program
- it’s huge in the sense that the engineering school alone is the size of Columbia or Duke. So classes may be big.
- graduation rate is low in comparison to others top-50 schools. I suspect it’s due to the rigor while at the same time, many of those that get accepted there aren’t good enough to handle the curriculum/workload. In a way, that’s a good thing because it means the education you’d receive is not watered down even though your peers aren’t of the same caliber as CalTech/Columbia on average.</p>