Agree with what I understand the JHS position to be. If one wishes to finish undergraduate education in the best position to practice as an engineer, then Chicago is not a very good option. Even if the nascent molecular program was “engineering,” Chicago also has very broad general education requirements, something that also “detracts” from technical education. General education at some state schools only take up about a fourth of the curriculum, and those students typically have much greater flexibility in meeting those more limited requirements.
Separately, the alternates of Penn/Duke/Cornell/Columbia (ok, but not awesome engineering programs) seem odd for one whose goal is getting set up to practice as an engineer. For instance, while Harvard has an engineering program, I can’t imagine many choose Harvard for engineering, especially when the Great Dome is just down the river. MIT, Caltech, Berkeley, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Purdue, and Carnegie Mellon are places that I can think of off the top of my head that probably have better high-end engineering reputations, and there’s a slew of great, technically-focused, schools, too: Harvey Mudd, Rose-Hulman, Bucknell, Lehigh, etc.
Would also offer my sense, rightly or wrongly, someone who frames an inquiry in terms of “I want to be an engineer, but Chicago doesn’t have engineering” probably just shouldn’t go to Chicago–there’s a whole different flavor of Kool-Aid being peddled there. If one wants a focused trade-school experience, then Chicago is a (really) poor choice. By contrast, a student who wants a strong hard science education, which also comes with the opportunity to build a worldview that permits an engaged future technical practice in which one can consider technology’s role in society, its appropriate uses, and potential misuses, then Chicago might be one of the best five places in the universe to go to college.