I’d suggest you cast a wide net in terms of applications, see where you get in, visit financially viable options and and then make a decision. You are putting the cart before the horse trying to made a decision now.
As an aside, there may be a different pressure at a school like UMinn – where you feel that you “have” to be at the top of your class in order to feel successful or perhaps even get the type of job you may desire…where being in the pack of a school like MIT woudl likely land you many opportunities.
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All of the better engineering schools (even ranking 100 or so) are going to be difficult. We visited MIT, Caltech, and a wide variety of engineering schools including Rice, GT, Cornell, Michigan, Cal, and Alabama etc. The curriculum doesn’t vary all that much and STEM tends to draw the smartest and most organized kids on campus.
My son rejected a bunch of them for different reasons: MIT (too stressful-) , Caltech (too small - even though his cousin attends and loves it) , Cal - dilapidated , Rice - too hot, etc. etc.
He carefully gauged whether the students were happy - that could mean intensely busy- but it is a different kind of stress.
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Cal dilapidated? wow…I haven’t seen it in a long time. Is that true? If so, what a shame!
Minnesota has this kind of pressure in that engineering students need to earn a 3.2 college GPA to be assured admission into their desired majors. Those with lower college GPAs may be admitted on a space available basis.
Note that this “weed out” system is fairly common (but not universal) in popular state flagships where the engineering and CS departments do not have the capacity to accept as majors all interested students. Texas A&M, Purdue, Virginia Tech, Penn State, and Wisconsin* have similar systems (though different admission thresholds).
*Wisconsin admits to major, but engineering students must meet sometimes-high college GPA requirements to stay in their majors (progression requirements).
If your reaction to the intensity of those schools is that it’s stressful, you may have already answered your question. Some people thrive on that while others don’t like it. The key thing is to find a place that’s right for you.
As some of the posters have noted, you’ll need to figure out what would stress you out – having to maintain certain grades to stay in your program, math prodigy classmates, competition for jobs – and then pick the best place where you think you could learn best and be happiest. With that said, I might not obsess too much about it at this point as the tippy top schools might not accept you, and then, well… you’ve stressed about this for no reason!