Should she apply straight to engineering school?

One larger school that has engineering undecided for first years and easy admit to specific majors later is University of Arizona. This was true two years ago at least when we visited D14. She would have chosen U Arizona over ASU for engineering, in part because of the easy changes. She ended up at Illinois Tech, which also has easy transfer between engineering majors, but fewer major options outside of engineering.

Entering as undeclared where others are being admitted to a specific department and then having to apply to a department is, to me, the same problem as admitting to a department. Something to be avoided if you aren’t sure which area you want to major in. The colleges I would recommend are those that do not place restrictions on the students choice of department (other than being able to graduate within 4 years).

Clemson and Valparaiso are smaller schools with engineering that allow exploration before declaring an engineering major. Neither has the ultra competitive standards to get into the major of choice (like Purdue, etc) and both offer decent scholarships to students like your daughter. Other majors are also available if engineering turns out to not be her thing.

At PSU, you were admitted to the engineering college without a specific major unless you were in the Scholars program (very competitive, big scholarship). Admission to majors happened in your sophomore year and you really needed to do it then to graduate on time - your first real engineering course were typically in your 3rd or 4th semester, so delaying the decision (if you even could) meant delaying graduation, cramming semesters full of hard classes, and/or restricting your choices of upper level courses. Getting into majors was competitive but a 3.0 GPA gave you free choice and the “common” majors (ME, WE, Aero, etc) always had openings. Transferring majors later was possible (I did!) but you got to pick after the current sophomores so some would be closed even if you DID have a high GPA.