I don’t have specific schools to suggest, but do have some thoughts on an approach just as food for thought.
When you dive into the world of highly selective college admissions, it can make your head spin when you see students elbowing each other aside to collect more AP scores, more research projects, more national prizes, etc. Scads of high school students apparently already accomplished everything an undergrad is taught in order to get INTO undergrad.
Likewise, when you dive into the world of athletic recruiting, it can make your head spin when you see students vying for spots on the “best” club teams, creating the slickest highlight reels, attending the most showcases to be seen by the “right” coaches.
It can start to feel like everything is so high-stakes and everyone else’s kid is somehow “ahead” of yours. Don’t get sucked in and try to keep your kid from getting sucked in.
BOTH processes can become a full-time job for students (and parents). For a student who is talented in both areas, it can be overwhelming.
My first suggestion is to try to remain objective and not get caught up in the rat race of what other families are doing. You are wise to be thinking about the academic potential of schools now, including the availability of engineering.
The majority of my kid’s teammates went on to play at college. (She chose not to.) But most of them are not at strong D1 programs, even if they started out there. Many are at schools they NEVER would have attended if not for athletics — or are now at their third such school, with mixed results. Everyone SAYS not to attend somewhere you would not want to go if you couldn’t play, but in practice I found most kids couldn’t walk away from a sport they were “great” at and it was not so easy to match a place on a team with an ideal academic/ geographic/etc. fit. I also note that if athletics is driving the bus, there is a higher chance a student will transfer schools along the way, which can make completion of an engineering degree and co-ops even more challenging.
My second note is to be aware that coaches and expectations change. While Stanford may have had engineering majors on its teams over the years, I also know students who visited and were told by the coach at the time: “If you want to major in engineering, you can’t play here.” Your best bet is to find a school where there is historically a steady stream of engineering majors, but consider what would happen with a coaching change. Ask the current coach about it when you visit.
Along those lines, consider how much you want to rely on an athletic scholarship. If your student is injured or decides continuing on the team is incompatible with academic goals, can he still afford to attend? (I note that top students at D1 schools still get academic scholarships to spread out the athletic scholarship money further, but at the tippy top academic schools, the student might depend almost entirely on an athletic scholarship.)
Faced with the two-pronged college admissions analysis, my child ultimately took a very narrow approach to athletic recruiting. She first decided she wanted to be in a certain geographic region and narrowed her search, camps, tournaments, etc., to that area. Then she made a list of the schools in that area that offered what she wanted in academic programs.
That slashed the list considerably. All the D2 schools were out. It became clear she was not going to be recruitable at any of the D1 schools on her list. In the end, there were about eight D3 schools left, which was a much more manageable number for contacting coaches, etc.
It also meant that there was a much higher chance she would not get an offer to play at any of them, compared to teammates using a shotgun approach. (However, I do think her coach contacts may have been higher quality and more consistent than theirs, which worked in her favor.)
But she was firm in having academics drive the bus — that was the point of going to college. In the end, she did receive an offer at her top-choice D3, but decided not to play after all because she wanted a bigger school experience with some more specialized academic programs than the D3 offered. Maybe she was leaning that way all along before she could admit it to herself and that’s why she was willing to narrow her list in the first place. I don’t know for sure.
Regardless, I am glad that she prioritized her academic experience over her athletic experience. Her former teammates are getting four more years to pursue the sport they love, but many are not setting themselves up well for the next 40 years of their careers. However, I am also glad that her athletic lens allowed her to avoid getting sucked into the hamster wheel of APs/internships/research/academic competitions that put undue academic pressure on some of her classmates.
It is quite the tightrope walk. Best wishes to you.
But he works his butt off all the time. It’s hard. When you find yourself on a good team there is no easy pathway to success. He loves every minute of the competition. I think he’s nuts.