What @momofboiler1 has posted here can’t be repeated often enough. There simply is no substitute for going through the data school by school. No one is more motivated to do this for your child than you are.
First, pick one school. Google the school name followed by common data set or cds. The school will often present you with a list of their most recent common data sets. Click on the most recent one. It is lengthy, so scroll through the pages to familiarize yourself with what information is there
Second, focus on Section C. That’s where you’ll live for Admissions information. C1 tells you how many students applied and were accepted, giving you the acceptance rate. CDS reports this by gender. Gender matters. For a lot of reasons, acceptance rates often by gender, so make note of the overall acceptance rate and that of your child’s gender.
C7 is very important. The school itself tells you what emphasis they place on each of 19 different admissions criteria. This is why any of the prediction formulas are useless unless they factor in these priorities. Each school varies widely in their priorities.
C9-11 is where you’ll find the numbers you’re looking for in terms of GPA and test scores. Pay attention to C9 where they tell you what percent of the freshman class even submitted test scores. Only a third of this year’s freshman submitted ACT or SAT scores at one school I looked at recently. In these test optional days, you can’t assume that every applicant has submitted test scores and therefore average test scores or even ranges can be very misleading if most applicants didn’t even submit them. This too varies widely among different schools.
Section H gives information on Financial Aid. Good information here if that’s important to you.
Section I gives information on class size and student:teacher ratio.
Section J gives information motion on Degrees Conferred. This is useful to get a sense of how big the department(s) are which yo are considering for your child.
As a general rule, schools which accept fewer than 15-20% are a lottery. No one is a match to these schools, which are a reach for every student no matter how well qualified. The sheer numbers are just too daunting. Furthermore, the real acceptance rates for the general pool of applicants are different than what are reported because as many as 200-250 students from any freshman class can be athletes. Their admission is based in a whole different set of criteria. The smaller the school, the bigger a factor this is. Then there are others who are admitted based on other factors, i.e. legacies, children of faculty & other employees, applicants with special talents, and underrepresented minorities.
As I mentioned earlier, there is also the school’s efforts to balance the gender ratio at the school. The college population these days is about 60:40 female:male. Despite this engineering tends to be 3:1 male:female. Business majors also tend to be more heavily male. Not necessarily, but tend to be.
Engineering majors as a group tend to have the highest test scores at any college. So, when you look at the general admissions criteria for a college, it’s best to assume that th scores of engineering students are higher than the overall student body. General gpa and test scores in the middle 50% of accepted students are a good indication of a match. But for an engineering applicant, I’d focus on the upper end of that range, starting with the middle of the mid 50% unless it is exclusively an engineering college.
One other caveat is that factors like test optional and numbers of applicants hav been shifting wildly in the past year or two. If the college hasn’t yet posted the 2021-22 common data set, it’s probably a good idea to go back and check again after they have. In general, it will probably be useful to check the past 2 years because either one may be an anomaly due to Covid. Looking at more than one year will give you more stable data.
Finally, check with posters here about the advantages and disadvantages of applying early to any particular school, keeping in mind that the vast majority of athletes are counted in the early decision and early ap data, skewing that information to appear to have higher acceptance rates than they actually do.
Have fun.