Check out Kansas State. The have a new Engineering building with nice facilities, an interesting looking campus (not flat), and encourage music for non-music majors.
There is always Carnegie Mellon University.
I think DU is a very good option, but the engineering school is not as well know as the other Colorado schools you have already considered. The music school is probably better than CU, although more classical and of course no big marching band (‘music’ can mean a lot of things). Depending on the type of engineering he’s looking for, U of Utah is well known for gaming and other computer focused engineering.
While a lot of engineering student also have an interest in music, it’s unlikely you are going to find a really good music school at a STEM school (Rochester is an exception). My daughter is at a STEM school, and it doesn’t offer music at all but has a very good orchestra, some smaller student music groups, and some faculty lead groups because the students want to continue their music. My daughter is inspired by them but just doesn’t have the time to participate. If she was at CU or another school with a big music department, she wouldn’t have time to participate.
A classmate of mine at CU was an engineering student. She made the decision before she even started that she was going to take 5 years to graduate because she wanted to take classes other than engineering. I remember her taking piano lessons, mythology, some history and other classes just because she wanted to have more than just engineering. I think she took 1 class outside engineering every semester.
Mentioned above were Rochester & Carnegie Mellon. Those are above our budget. Also DU is too expensive.
This is kind of random- but came up in great engineering schools: Any thoughts on Iowa State? The campus looks gorgeous in photos/virtual tour.
Great engineering no idea about music, but again OOS public tend to be expensive as privates without the aid that most privates give. BTW don’t rule out any privates they might give merit money.
He might get some merit at DU, for strong students they can usually make the price equal to CU.
One of the NM kids at my D’s school was motivated by music, his top choices were Oklahoma State and Washington State and he ultimately chose OSU.
Rochester has merit, though their NPC calculator won’t predict an amount for you. 50K per year is a doable budget at many private schools with merit.
To estimate, look up the school on collegedata.com
Click on the money matters tab to see the percentage of kids without need who got merit. If, for example, its 35%, you want to be in the top 35% in the application pool. Click on the admissions tab and look at the reported GPA and test score ranges to estimate if you are there.