True @DecideSomeHow @boneh3ad . Chapel Hill is notorious for being extremely competitive for OOS students. Great school but we removed it from our list for that reason.
There are a lot of public schools with similar restrictions. Public universities in Texas have similar rules and are overwhelmingly in-state students as a result.
On the other hand, schools like Illinois and Berkeley like to encourage out-of-staters more and have comparatively higher percentages of those students, though they aren’t immune to state-mandated enrollment pressure.
Purdue is more highly regarded than Maryland in Engineering. It is top ten overall, and top ten in most sub-categories. If that’s your metric, and all things being equal, Purdue is a better choice. But both schools are excellent.
If you’re curious about what companies recruit at these schools, online you can find a listing of employers that attend the different career fairs.
Here is a listing of the participates at the UMD 2017 Career Fair.
https://umd-csm.symplicity.com/events/students.php?mode=list&cf=FCIF2017
Both schools have several career fairs, all of which are well attended. It (career fair and career resource centers) is a strength at both schools.
If you want to get nit-picky, you can use the ASEE profiles to compare the two engineering programs.
http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/7789/screen/15
http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/7675/screen/15?school_name=University+of+Maryland%2C+College+Park
I would put a lot more weight on your college visits, than on anything you may find in the profile. However, the info is interesting.