Poke around the website of your major at each school. See if you can get an idea of internship options, what the recruiting looks like for jobs out of school (job fair? how many companies recruit there? primarily regional recruiting?). If not, it would be worth an email to each school to try and get that info about your prospective major. Then think carefully about which area you’d like to be in for the next 4+ years. Is transportation to/from Syracuse or Raleigh an issue? Look at flight schedules, etc. FWIW my son loved the Raleigh area but NCState not so much so in the end he passed on it after being accepted. It was probably my first choice for him mainly because we lived in the area years ago and absolutely loved it. Good luck!
@meganewarren. What did you decide? Are you still considering NC State?
Sorry to anyone who was following this thread!! I want to do a follow up post to help out everyone working on college apps right now, because this website was so helpful to me last year.
I ended up picking NC State!!
Very tough choice, I ended up receiving a $25k scholarship (per year) from Syracuse + financial aid. Needless to say I was completely blown away. My mind was pretty much made up for Syracuse until I got a letter from State offering me about $13k in financial aid, bringing my COA within a couple thousand dollars of the instate rate, and about $5k less than Syracuse.
If anyone has any questions for me, please comment or shoot me a message!