“Would stay away from engineering dorms.” - Although there is merit to recommendation of friends outside of engineering, I’d say there are a lot of advantages to engineering dorms. I say that based on my experience at an engineering school, where most dorms were “engineering dorms”. Freshman engineers have mostly the same classes / exam schedules. It can be nice to have study groups nearby (or just walk down the hall looking for somebody to help you sort through a challenging problem).
When my daughter was at an engineering school her freshman year, I happened to be in her dorm room when a friend dropped by and expressed her glee at “no calc problem set assignement today!” (a rare treat)… That meant all the girls had some extra hours to do something fun together.