It helps that your son is focused on engineering. An in-state applicant with your son’s stats would have a good, but by no means certain chance at engineering at UT Austin, particularly if he ranked outside the top 6 percent of his class, even at a competitive private school. Similarly, I think your son has a chance there, but below 50%. Outside of certain highly acclaimed majors and honors programs there is more variety in academic performance on the UT campus.