At the well-regarded public University engineering programs with high acceptance rates, the engineering dropout rate is huge. If the acceptance rate were lower, the dropout rate would also be a lot lower, since a lot of the people who drop out wouldn’t have been accepted in the first place.
I’ve heard engineering jokingly referred to as “pre-business”. When I was an freshman engineering student at a public U, I remember a professor telling us “Look to your left and look to your right. Of the 3 of you, only one of you will graduate in EE here.” And I think he was about right.
However, there are always a percentage of students with lower stats, accepted only because of looser admission standards, who are able to successfully graduate. In my anecdotal experience, it is usually those who have gained some maturity and motivation and start to work harder than they did in high school.