As far as housing goes, you pick an LLC and get a building based off of where the LLC is housed. LLC (Living Learning Communities) are essentially themed dorms, by major or interest. There’s 18 options I believe, give or take. While some are consistently housed in certain buildings, they move around. East Village I believe is upper class dorms only. Honors is always in IV. Honestly, dorms don’t matter too much. They are all on campus, and have their locational advantages and are all decent quality. No dorm is more than a 10 minute walk to class. After freshman year you pick your housing specifically and it is apartment style rather than dorms. If you want more specifics on housing just let me know and I can elaborate, but the moral of the story is there’s no big short end of the stick and you don’t really have too much choice anyways.
To me, it sounds like you want EE or CE (Computer Engineering). Check the links below for degree options. We do appear to have a general engineering option though I don’t have any first hand testimony to it.
http://www.coe.neu.edu/undergraduate-studies/first-year-engineering
http://www.ece.neu.edu/ece/degrees-programs/undergraduate-studies
That is the drawback to UW. But that is college specific. At NEU changing colleges, degrees, or departments is a piece of cake. My friend switched from Biology to Business (the highest ranked NEU school) with little difficulty and with a not so stellar GPA. I don’t know what the policy is for Santa Clara but its worth looking into. There’s plenty of freedom at NEU though and UW is restrictive, hence why direct admit is important.
Any other questions just let me know!