<p>Besides the top few schools, rankings really don’t mean much. There will be a large difference between 1 and 15, but 15 to 30 really shouldn’t be that different. So I’d somewhat abandon the rankings (especially if they are relatively close) when it comes down to choosing schools. Compared to UT, Rice is stronger in the other fields, and will have a stronger student body. In terms of graduate schools, I hear Rice engineers are very succesful, and interviewers for jobs love the Rice name. But if you only want to do engineering, the other fields shouldn’t matter.</p>
<p>My preferences for schools (factoring in weather, overall academics, engineering curriculum + prestige and disregarding cost) would be Rice, Northwestern, Penn, UT. But your preferences seem to be somewhat different than mine. </p>
<p>You should post this in the engineering board, you will probably get more knowledgable answers there.</p>