They are in the paper-bound book. Viewing the rankings in this manner creates some understanding of the shape of the distribution curves.
Do they realize doctors have a high suicide/dissatisfaction rate and that a lot of law school grads have a ton of debt and can’t get jobs (and those that do hate their lives)? You may want to tell them that.
Having a green card is very helpful.
Again, tell the parents that unless they are hiring you, the opinion of employers matters more.
Well, my opinion is that neither is very important. In this case, though, the differences in rankings between these schools are so small as to be negligible. Like the difference between 15 and 23? Not a big deal. Georgia Tech and Purdue are also two of the most respected universities in the U.S. Forget about the rankings - none of these are bad choices. (30 is a bad cut off - there are so many colleges in the U.S. that being in the top 100 still puts a school in the top 5% of colleges in the U.S., and many of the colleges a bit down the list are still pretty well known and excellent universities).
The other think about the rankings is that they don’t talk about whether or not their differences are meaningful, statistically speaking - they only rank them in order of the 5-point score. So for example, on the graduate level, Georgia Tech is #2 and Purdie us ranked #6. But GT scored a 4.6 and Purdue’s score is a 4.3. UIUC’s score (at #8) is a 3.9. GT and UIUC are 6 spaces apart but they’re only separated by 1/2 a point - about 10% of the scale. And is that 10% even in what’s most important to you, as a student? For example, part of the rankings on the undergrad level are based on the acceptance rates into the specific school. But who cares about that? That kind of metric unnecessarily dings public universities (which accept higher rates of students on average) and lesser-known schools that are self-selecting. A lot of the metrics also favor schools that attract higher-income students, which basically rewards colleges for being expensive.
Really, with the crop of choices you have, you could roll a 7-sided die and pick your school based on that and still not make a bad choice. So I think it’s up to you and what you want. I don’t think you should put aside cost and school atmosphere - you can get an excellent education - in engineering or otherwise - at any of these schools. If it were me and the cost was equal I’d probably go with USC or Wash U just because of the experience, but that’s because of my personality and what I want out of a college.
And oh, I’ve known several people who were “certain” about their major and then changed it. My husband, for example, knew he wanted to be an aerospace engineering major since he was about 3 years old. He went to space camp, did summer aerospace engineering programs, got an engineering scholarship for college, interned at NASA, the whole works. He was the last person on earth I ever expected to change his major. Halfway through his junior year he volunteered at an elementary school (I dragged him along with me) and fell in love with teaching; he changed his major to mathematics. Now (after taking a break from college to perform military service) he’s major in statistics after deciding he wants to work in tech.