My younger son graduated with a Chemical Engineering degree and also had high stats. He went to UAlabama for almost free. Our net annual cost was maybe $6k per year, at most.
Alabama has amazing facilities with its newly built 1,000,000 square feet of additional STEM academic space. The goal was to have STEM facilities that rivaled MIT. The federal gov’t and state poured millions and millions into the complex. The complex is amazing.