I have gotten accepted into UWisc (College of Letters & Science), Purdue (CS), UMass (CS), and UMD College Park (CS), and am deciding between Purdue and UMD at the moment. I removed UWisc and UMass from the list mainly because they were too cold after visit. But it won’t be much an issue for you since you are from Chicago.
Here is a little more detailed (personal) outline for why I would recommend for and against UWisc and Purdue:
UWisc Pros:
-Very beautiful campus!
-Ranked about #40 for national college.
-UWisc’s graduate ranking is ranked very high (Recommended if your child is planning to attend graduate school afterwards)
-City (not get bored)
-Has Wisconsin’s largest library
-Has award-winning dining halls (so does Purdue)
-VERY HIGH funding (known as among top 10 US schools that receive the most funding; however, so is Purdue)
UWisc Cons:
-Very cold and windy
-Its undergraduate ranking for CS program is not that high.
-Too large
-One of the biggest party school (it may be among pros depending on your personality, but I personally do not like party schools because it gets me distracted from studying)
-Very expensive (After visiting, I learned that you will need huge sums of living expenses while studying in UWisc., on top of net price mentioned on the website)
-Small dorms (but Purdue has small dorms too)
-NOT guaranteed CS major (no one can be directly admitted to UWisc.'s CS. Everyone who applied for CS major has to take at least one year of pre-CS course and declare as CS major in order to be CS major.)
Purdue Pros:
-Its undergraduate CS program is better known than UWisc
-Has award-winning dining halls
-More quiet (Recommended if your child prefers a quiet, undisturbed life)
-Provides free (certain) transportation system for Purdue students.
-Guaranteed CS major (if you applied for CS and if you got into CS, then you are now declared are CS major from freshman)
-Great computer science building inside.
-VERY HIGH funding (about $3 bil/yr; however, a bit less than UWisc.)
-Recently finished building a new CS building after receiving substantial amount of funding.
-Has VERY many big-named corporation partners (Google, IBM, Microsoft, etc.)
-First CS Department made (around 1950) in the United States.
-Very high CS salary (last year, among all Purdue graduates, Purdue CS graduates had the highest average salary of about $80k. Outlier was about $130k.)
Purdue Cons:
-VERY notorious for being tough to survive in CS (average grade in Purdue CS is C, yet it is still considered not bad due to its toughness.).
-Low graduation rate (Overall, 6 yr is about 70% and 4 yr is about 45%).
-There are MANY weed-out classes in the first two years of CS in Purdue.
-It is in rural area, so there aren’t many stuff to do outside of Purdue. (People tend to say Purdue is in the middle of a vast corn field, which it really is, but don’t think the campus itself is literally surrounded by corn fields. There are some shops, restaurants, banks, etc. outside of campus, letting students go some places on weekends. After about 10~20 miles outside of Purdue campus, corn fields begin.)
I cannot speak for UMN and Rose Hulman because I neither applied for nor visited those two colleges. But I do know that Rose Hulman values its undergraduate students (because that’s all there are; no doctorate degrees offered in RH) and is very well known for its engineering.
Overall, if I were you, I would go with Purdue. Although Purdue may be very tough, your child may get used to it soon and outperform other students.
If you would like some sources, then please let me know and I will show you. I didn’t include sources because there were too many to write. Please note that some of the information are subjective (ex. UWisc’s campus is very beautiful, very cold).