And to be clear, we aren’t looking for any enhancements towards admissions, just learning and understanding. S27 has fairly little interest in super selective schools…his long “brainstorm stage” list of potential interesting schools are nearly all 50% or higher admit rates. It helps that S25 ran the NPC on a lot of schools and was able to tell S27 “don’t bother” about a variety of schools that would be out of budget! 
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It’s actually quite easy to build a list based on budget - and many schools have auto merit - meaning your grades / test lock you in to a # or a minimal #.
Perfect. That’s a huge step that your all on the same page.
Once you’ve set a budget (great job!), it’s all about fit, and only the applicant can determine what that’s based on. Our son’s final three schools had wildly different acceptance rates…95, 50 and 15. It just wasn’t a factor when he built his list. It was simply coincidence that he ended up at the most selective one. He agonized over it for months. It was weather that sealed the deal two days before the deadline.
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One more residential summer program to check out: Frontiers at WPI. DS23 loved it.
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Adding: Univ of Illinois has an online quiz about engineering to help you identify your interests in engineering — a fun first step that you could do right away.
For summer programs — Michigan tech has some sponsored and inexpensive programs that might be helpful. My daughter had a great experience there!
Finally, I’ll say that my daughter gravitated toward schools where she could take her engineering focus/choice from day one in college so she could discover sooner rather than later if she wanted to pivot. Also she wanted a place where she could pivot to another engineering focus easily. USC Viterbi was her top choice in that regard and she starts in the fall! In fact she literally just signed up for classes an hour ago and texted me her schedule.
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