Engineering at Miami University vs. University of Cincinnati

I am a rising sophomore from Cincinnati, OH, transferring from the University of Dayton. When I was originally choosing colleges, I was between Dayton, Miami, and UC. UD turned out not to be a great fit for me (academically I felt it was too restrictive and too small of a school).

I have always loved Miami, and would have chosen it the first time around except for one concern: it’s engineering program. Now that I am looking at it again, I want to clear up any misconceptions about it.

I know that Miami is rather new to engineering, but does this really mean that it would be a bad decision to go there? It’s ABET accredited, which I know matters, but an engineering company (Melink) at UD’s career fair told me they generally didn’t hire Miami engineers because the education “wasn’t hands-on enough” as UC or UD.

I know that UC has a very good reputation for its engineering program (especially for the co-ops).

If this really is the case, it would probably be unwise to choose it over UC, right?