<p>Snow, it depends a bit too on geography and specialty. I’m a Purdue and Cajun State U. graduate among other schools and partial to South schools 
Purdue is awesome, mostly because of the faculty and depending on program the facilities - The traditional ‘college scene’ is a bit muted. Decent male/female ratio - not good tho.</p>
<p>The people who complain about TA’s teaching probably speak of the side classes, Calc, Phys, Chem, and the like. Or worst case freshman or sophomore engineering recitations etc. I don’t think it’s as widespread as people say it is.</p>
<p>Start with the specialties and see which specialties your student likes, and shop there. Not all programs have all ‘great’ specialties. In general, larger schools have bigger (and richer) engineering programs, so pretty much any Big 10 school, a lot of Southern great programs (Duke, NC State, Georgia Tech, Auburn, the usual Texas schools). </p>
<p>The male/female ratio should be decent at some of the larger state schools - and each has their own personality. With decent grades and test scores there are lots of options.</p>
<p>We have a few people from the smaller schools (Rose Hulman for example) and their grads are absolutely great - Rose is a very ‘personal’ school from what I have been told. </p>
<p>So, start thinking about specialties and see who has brand name professors there. At the end the profs make or break the program. At Purdue we had some incredible profs that are quite famous in the field (books, research, and the like) and they really inspired us.</p>