Goodness, we didn’t do any of this (except affordability. We weren’t scientific at all, or just thought about things naturally without spreadsheets. My son applied to one school (an Ivy) because he noticed a student had a key to the theater, and another because he thought the tour guide was cool. Naturally he thought about some other things, and I gave him my input, and I am sure we must have written something down, but it wasn’t that complicated. There was a funny thread here once about reasons kids liked a school…
For the OP does he prefer a Tech. environment, like MIT or Caltech as you mentioned, so that might mean Rensselaer or Worcester Polytech Institute? Or a university like the Ivies or little Ivies (Tufts, Amherst, Williams etc.) Some state U’s have great CS departments.
What part of the country? City or rural? Those are simple filters.