Wake Forest vs Penn St vs Northeastern (Global studies) for UG engineering?

Yeah, my S24’s big ECs were varsity sports (not recruited), and he did great with highly selective universities and LACs outside of NESCACs and Ivies, where he . . . did not do so great. I’m tempted to overread the situation and say a rather traditional prep-school student-athlete was an oversupplied category for the latter colleges, still a big plus for the former. But in any event, I think it is definitely not the case that “nobody” values sports as an EC, I think it may be more a fit thing.