That may not be where it is for Engineering.
UIUC and Purdue make it in to the T-50 for USNWR (Purdue barely), but for engineering, these are at the very top. There are many other colleges which are ranked relative low by USNWR (below their top 50), but are considered top schools for engineering , like VTech, TAMU, UMD, or UMN.
Of course, these colleges are reaches for engineering for most applicants, despite what their average admission rate happens to be.
Otherwise, what @ucbalumnus wrote.
There have been a few previous threads on the matter that will also help:
If he’s looking specifically at CS, this is also helpful: