I have been mainly looking at University of Illinois UC, UT Austin, Georgia Tech, and University of Miami. I live in Tennessee so the California are to far away from home for my liking. Any recommendations?
As a sampling of colleges with a range of admissions criteria, look into RPI, Rose-Hulman and Clarkson.
Michigan, Purdue and Ohio State are also within driving distance. CMU too.
You can try Georgia Tech or Columbia 
I would take a look at Stony Brook. I don’t know too much about the Computer Engineering major, but I know that the guy who teaches the Embedded Systems courses out there is one of the most popular teachers in the Engineering department.
OSU, Purdue, RPI
Rose, Franklin Olin, CMU, Uwash, and Georgia Tech are the ones that come to mind.
What are your stats???
How much will your parents pay each year? Ask them, please don’t guess. We see later posts from a lot of disappointed students who thought their parents would pay more.
You have a lot of expensive OOS publics on your list.
Concurring with the CMU recommendations.
Yes. Hardware is kinda a dead end these days, certainly as compared to the opportunities in software. A degree in Computer Engineering is heavily focused on hardware and often involves taking many math and electrical engineering classes required for ABET acreditation. The software component is often an afterthought. You will not be qualified for most programming jobs.
Even if you have a strong interest in lower level programming (compilers, firmware, embedded systems) you’d probably have better job prospects by studing Computer Science at a school that allows you to take a few digital electronic electives. Of course if its really hardware design that you want, all I can say is best of luck.
Well that is really disappointing because I like hardware more than I do software.
@butterfinger456 check out U. Alabama- Huntsville… very close to TN, nice merit scholarships for qualifying students.