Mom2collegekids is right about Alabama’s engineering school. It is very challenging … but very rewarding, too.
My son is a Bama grad (economics and political science with minors in math and computer-based honors). His best friends were engineering majors. One is from the Dallas area who had a 36 on the ACT and nearly a perfect SAT. She, like my son, was a National Merit scholar. She turned down the likes of VT, Duke and Rice for Bama. Won all sorts of prestigious national scholarships including a Goldwater and later, a Mitchell. Got her undergrad degree paid for. Got her masters in engineering paid for – and she did that in Ireland. Now she’d at Stanford getting her PhD – again paid for. One of my son’s roommates has a chemical engineering degree. He works in consulting in New York City. Another is getting his PhD in chemistry from Stanford. Another is in his third year of med school. And, one of his fraternity brothers got a very nice engineering position in KC, long before graduation, too.
Mom2collegekids has a son who got his chemE degree at Bama. He is in med school.
I also have a younger son at Alabama Huntsville, which has an outstanding engineering school. The city is also home to NASA, Northrup Grumman, Boeing and lots and lots of engineering firms. As my son puts it, you can graduate into a job there. He has several friends who will do so,
I will echo that VT does not offer much in terms of merit money – we live in VA.