@monydad an answer to the Dartmouth engineering piece - Dartmouth undergrads have engineering available to them as part of the undergraduate curriculum. There is no applying to “leave” the liberal arts section and “join” the engineering section, it’s just changing your major. Engineering students would take engineering courses as well as fulfilling their liberal arts curriculum.
So I think the main difference between the two are if you know you want to be an Engineer, Cornell will let you join the Engineering School and focus on engineering and mostly engineering. But if you aren’t certain, or end up wanting to change majors midway through, Dartmouth’s flexibility and integrated concept makes it simple to change majors but also not have to restart from scratch because you’ve already taken pre-reqs in your new major.
Not sure why it’s “Shame on them” to be able to have that flexibility. Undergrads to take courses from Thayer professors and in the Thayer buildings and can utilize the Thayer resources, but they get their degree from Dartmouth, so it’s not an exact parallel of Cornell’s Undergraduate School of Engineering.
Thayer is a graduate engineering school that Dartmouth undergrads can take advantage of for an Engineering major.