How are you defining mid sized - there are tons in the 5k-10k size range? Some that come to mind that aren’t extremely selective:
Case Western, RPI, WPI, Stevens, Rose-Hullman, Rochester
You can also look at the smaller flagships - some are actually extremely affordable:
University of Utah, University of Maine, University of Wyoming.
My nephew is similar - he can’t get excited about any of the schools and no matter what the criteria is, he says “it would be ok.” His parents didn’t go to college so I’m helping…here’s what I did:
We decided, due to Covid, that he didn’t want to be a plane ride away from family. This limited us to schools within 2-6hrs driving plus at least 1 in state school. I went to College Navigator, selected all of the states that are roughly within that distance. Then, filled in that he wanted a 4 yr non-profit, private or public with >40% acceptance and programs in Business, Engineering and Physical Sciences (his 3 areas of interest.)
There were about 250 schools so I downloaded the list to Excel and then eliminated:
There may have been a few more criteria that I’m forgetting. But, this reduced the number of potential schools to 50 plus instate publics. This is still a lot, but given he will probably apply to 10-20 (hoping for merit), he just has 30 to eliminate.
I hope this helps!
@HMom16 – you’re a rockstar Aunt!
@HMom16 - College Navigator is great! The only suggestion that I would add, is to come up with one thing the kid wants nearby. Happykid’s grad school spreadsheet included a checkbox for Trader Joe’s, Aldi, and an Asian supermarket. Yup, miss any one of those three, and it got tossed from her list. 
What part of the country are you in?
I just got back from a DIY road trip through CA with D21. One school we visited that suits all of your criteria is Santa Clara University in the heart of silicon valley. They are seriously ramping up their engineering school with new buildings and maker labs under construction and they have all manner of internships with nearby tech firms. But it is a lot more accessible than nearby Stanford in terms of admissions. With those kinds of SATs he should get in. It feels like a school that is on a serious upward trajectory. It is a mid-size school of about 5,000 undergrads I think but growing.
@HMom16 Impressive!
@SchoolNews My S is a bit like this and has similar general criteria and interests to your son. S got so many email after the PSAT that he just stopped checking email altogether. When we visited a few colleges, he had trouble picking a favorite and kind of liked them all. Virtual tours reaction has been pretty meh though he really liked the WPI one. I think he gets a bit overwhelmed about which college and that was before Covid.
I have to admit that I stepped in and did a lot of research. We did tweak the first list post Covid to make most of the schools within a two day drive from home. I gave him a couple of preferences tests. I used Niche to search and the Fiske guide, which is awesome and tells you about similar schools. I also noticed that there are not an abundance of good engineering schools that are small or midsized with a beautiful campus and suburban. S has several larger public schools with honors programs on the list. The GC suggested that.
Here’s our list - reaches, targets, and safeties - and some schools we scratched off only for distance reasons, in case it helps.
Smaller and medium sized:
Santa Clara is toward the top of our list. Shhh @Camasite don’t tell everybody. 
Tufts
Carleton
Harvey Mudd (maybe too small for you)
WPI (maybe too small for you)
RPI
Montana Tech
Colorado School of Mines
Notre Dame
Case Western
Lehigh
Larger Publics:
Mid-tier UCs (UCSB, UCSD, UCSC, and Davis)
Cal Poly
UMass Amherst
CU Boulder
University of Washington
Oregon State
Wisconsin
My hunch is that Santa Clara will be more competitive this year since some Bay Area folks with plenty of tuition money might be sticking closer to home and the school is a rising star with a lot of support.
We are casting the net widely due to Covid and the major impaction, which is harder because it’s creating more supplemental essay work to be done. UMass, for example, is more grades and rigor driven, while the private schools might care more about a lack of ECs. Good luck!
Lafayette
Thanks we are east coast, so Santa Clara location is a little off-putting. Also really did not want a religiously-affiliated school, but agree with the things to like about Santa Clara. Did you look at USD as well? It seems similar. Also agree Fiske is helpful
@SchoolNews Wow, I almost could have written this post myself about our S21, except he has only watched 1 whole college presentation (UTD). We are located in WA, and are targeting schools that have a good CS program and are affordable for us based on hopefully securing some merit scholarship money. I also make sure that the school is ABET accredited as I heard that makes the difference for engineering programs.
Here’s our current list if it helps your son at all:
I think that everything would blend together for me if I watched 45 virtual information sessions.
A few midsize private schools that are strong in engineering that I can think of offhand are; Lehigh, URochester, Tufts, ND, WPI, and Case Western. There are many other private and public options.
Engineering will narrow down the list of colleges to some extent. To further narrow things down I suggest you:
@SchoolNews Santa Clara is far superior to USD for tech. The location can’t be beat for internships and they are building a huge STEM building as mentioned before. SC is also I would say “religious lite”, which is good because we don’t practice.
My son doesn’t want to go anywhere hot, but ASU has a great honors program I hear, though also not near you.
thank you
Brandeis is good size and likes to compare itself to CalTech. It’s not in the heart of a city but admissions boasts about being able to see Boston from campus. Think this could be a fit?
Did not make it all the way to San Diego. But Santa Clara has over 2x the endowment of any other Catholic University on the west coast and just has more resources than the rest. Niche has Santa Clara as the #4 Catholic university in the country after Notre Dame, Georgetown, and Boston College.
And west coast Jesuit schools are going to be about as liberal and open-minded as any Christian-based universities. I’ve talked to some students from there and you can coast through with barely any religion if you want. Lots of students do.
For engineering, my understanding is that Santa Clara is heads and shoulders above all the other west coast Catholics. My daughter is interested in molecular biology and genetics so Santa Clara is less of a draw for her. There are other privates that have more expansive natural science programs.
One plus for us, being in the Portland area, is that Santa Clara is basically next door to the San Jose airport. You could essentially walk to it from campus except the terminal is on the opposite side. In the pre-covid world there were lots of cheap direct flights back and forth between Portland and San Jose so Santa Clara would be a very easy school for her to get back and forth from.
Honestly I think my daughter liked Occidental better than Santa Clara but it’s a liberal arts school without an engineering program so wouldn’t be of interest to you. If she leaves the Northwest for college I expect Occidental will be her #1 choice.
Mapping web sites say that it is about 3.3 miles from SCU to the San Jose airport terminal.
At least he was willing to watch so many info sessions! It was pulling teeth to get S21 to watch them. Fortunately, we did an early in-state college tour his sophomore year which helped him decide on the preferred size/setting – he liked a big state school in a ‘college town’ type setting, definitely not urban. He doesn’t want to be more than 5 hour drive from home. And, has to meet our budget, which means in-state or enough merit to match that. Those were enough to narrow down his list – UVA, VA Tech, JMU, UDel. I made a few more suggestions but he rejected them as too far away so it will just be those four (2 safeties, 1 match, 1 reach)
So, maybe start with preference re: setting and distance? That was the biggest filter for my S21.
Is it possible that he’s a little bit depressed? Not necessarily clinical-level, get-a-therapist depressed - but in the more colloquial sense of the word. A lot of seniors in high school dream or at least think about the ivy-covered college visits of their fall, and he’s not going to get that. It seems like a lot of his college search has been disrupted or altered by COVID-19, and that may make it difficult for him to feel excited about any one place.
He’s not wrong, though; most college info sessions are the same. They do all essentially say the same thing: “Our students are smart and diverse; our classes are rigorous and interesting; our professors are intellectual and caring; come join our community!” With an in-person tour, you can at least interrupt to ask personal questions or wander off on your own to experience the campus without the tour guide’s marketing.
Yes, that is definitely part of the issue. I have recognized it. That said, don’t know how to shake it. Honestly wondering if he should just sit out the application process this year, I am not talking about a gap year, b/c that would involve applications, but just sit it out.
Not sure how he would occupy his time. He has not seen friends since school was out. Unemployment is so high, I don’t know how a 17 kid would get a job. Have even had trouble finding volunteer opportunities in our community. Travel is not an option.
My youngest was kind of like this…so I guided her.
She definitely wanted to go to college.
For her older sister, J, I said “Make a list of schools for us to visit.” J loves to research online and is independent and she came up with a list that we visited.
I said the same thing to the youngest…and nothing. One day I dragged her to the library to focus on this…but she said “Mom, you like researching things online. Can you help me?”
So I asked her what she wanted in a college.
1-2 hours from home. Not too big. She was going to major in Psychology and do pre-med so many colleges would work for that. I wanted a good value.
So I came up with a list of schools for her that fit with her GPA/SAT.
I thought The College of New Jersey would be a great fit (we are from NJ) so I started with that. We visited other colleges over Junior spring break. She liked the LACs, and hated Rutgers, our State U. After a while I realized she was comparing everything to TCNJ…I said why don’t you apply ED? Then she wouldn’t have to make a decision later on. She did and loved it there.