Here is my input, as a Junior Mechanical Engineer who considered many schools like UT/WashUSt.Louis/Cornell etc.
Like many state schools, you will often be left to fend for yourself here. If you ask professors for career advice, many will easily oblige(This is, in fact, how you will get easily the best career advice by the way). However, the advisors here are meant to facilitate quick graduation of students, as this affect rankings. This is their primary purpose. As such, you need to be able to go out and gather info from upper level students, professors, etc in making career and class decisions. This is something that isn’t terrible hard once you can summon the courage to go talk, so I personally dont think advisors are terribly important, as much as personal initiative and planning.
We recently developed the “25 by 25” initiative, based around greatly expanding our college. Its fairly controversial, as doubling enrollment is not always the best for undergrads, but the teaching is supposed to be controlled and managed using new “flipped classroom” techniques to maintain quality of classes(Im personally skeptical it will work in large class sizes, without significant assistants, but Im sure they will adjust). But, 25 by 25 will greatly increase research, which is our core competency. As such, expect to see our rankings and research output rise, but maybe not the actual quality of the experience here.
Like many public research universities, there is a mix of passionate and apathetic teachers. TAMU has plenty of professors here to do research who dont care as much about classes. This is, after all, to be expected. Unbeknownst to many students and parents, tuition really doesnt pay for these research professors: their own research funding does by a large amount. As such, their priorities will often be research. However, there are also many professors here who are excellent lecturers and teachers, who are in academia for this purpose.
Bottom line: where you go to college should, in my opinion, be based on several factors. Many people dont know what they’d like to do after graduation, and you probably shouldnt be expected to. However, if you have any ideas, it does help to choose a school aligned with your interest. Additionally, while your decision ideally isnt based on money, less debt means more flexibility. Most importantly though, if you really want to be an actual engineer(I personally always wanted to do a PhD after undergrad and become a scientist), then the most important thing for your undergrad may be the primary recruiting industry at your college. If you know you’d like to go into oil and gas, there is almost no where better than TAMU, and Im really not exaggerating here. UH is also good for this industry, but not as strong. UT is also heavily recruited for this, but is excellent if you’d like to do any sort of sensing of acoustics etc. However, if you want to go into say automotives for example, Michigan or a state school in that area may be better (I’m admittedly guessing here). My point is that different schools are specialized towards different industries, and you should try your best to take this into account because even though it wont dictate your future, it could make finding a job you like significantly easier. I realize all of this is alot to think about, especially for a highschooler. Goodluck.