Manhattan College sounds perfect for him. Small (3000+) but has a full range of engineering majors. Lots of academic support if he needs it. (See their Office of Academic Success.) To your concern about drop out rate, if he changes his mind, they also have Schools of Business, Arts & Science, and Education & Health. They recently opened a new Engineering & Science Center to expand their engineering facilities. They have a summer engineering camp for high school students who want to explore their interest in engineering.
I also wonder if he’d be interested in studying Art. Have you ever been to the Storm King Art Center? It’s an outdoor 500 acre sculpture park in New York’s Hudson Valley with sculpture’s of all shapes and sizes, some up to 80’ high and made if I-beams. It’s a fabulous day trip all by itself even if you didn’t have a kid thinking about college, but it could open him up to a world of possibilities.
The Pratt Institute for Art & Architecture in Brooklyn is interesting to visit if he considers school of that type. The campus itself is the largest outdoor sculpture park in NYC.
The Cooper Union for Art, Architecture, & Engineering in Manhattan is a small (900) but prestigious college which brings together art & engineering under one roof. Every student receives accepted to Cooper Union receives a half tuition scholarship.
Olin College of Engineering on the Needham/Wellesley town line is also very small (400) and has a unique hands on approach to the study of Engineering which sounds like it would be right up his alley. Highly competitive for admissions, but he sounds like the kind of kid they’re looking for. They also provide a half tuition scholarship for all their students. Although it’s an engineering focused college, their approach to learning follows the liberal arts tradition so it is steeped in arts, humanities, social sciences, and entrepreneurship, reflecting their belief that engineering exists for the purpose of improving the lives of people. Olin also has cross registration with Babson College of Babson next door, another college which integrates liberal arts with its primary focus, i.e. business. For more liberal arts, Olin also has cross registration with Wellesley just across town. Olin is worth a visit and tour even if it’s not on your list of schools to consider just because it shows a different approach to what the education of engineers can be.