Oh wow, our kids sound so similar!
You didn’t get to do any tours besides Lafayette? That is tough. Yeah, Lafayette didn’t show us inside any of the engineering buildings, either. DS thought it was too ‘liberal arts’ for him.
You can sometimes find great videos on youTube of college’s engineering facilities, but often, especially if they aren’t new or flashy, it’s hard to find anything.
So far, my DS is considering offers from:
- Georgia Tech - amazing but sooo expensive and far away
- University of Michigan - amazing but soo expensive and far away
- Northeastern - haven’t visited, but have heard great things about the campus, the program, and Boston. From what we’ve seen, the facilities look great. We really like the idea of the co-ops to get experience. They have connections with a TON of companies which is a big positive. However, still would cost over $40k/year for us.
- Rutgers Honors College - tempting, but the actual EE facilites look dated, and they are runnig out of space for engineering. Busch campus seemed pretty depressing.
- NJIT Honors - gave DS a full ride (minus food), but he’s hesitant. Not sure why. They have an absolutely amazing 10,000 sq ft maker space.
- Rowan - I see this is on your list. Have you visited? If not, I think you might be able to take a tour and actually get into their engineering building. It is brand new and extremely impressive. Their program is very hands on - lots of opportunities for to get involved, great projects, cool equipment, and engineering-focused activities. Great pipeline into Lockheed Martin for jobs/internships/co-op. The Dean of Electrical & Computer Engineering is a really amazing guy - he’s been holding info sessions on Friday evenings with admitted students, and offering to answer their questions. For the price, this is a top contender for my DS.
DS was also admitted to Stevens, which I hear has amazing labs/facilities/makerspaces, but it’s just too expensive to justify for what it is.
We did tour Drexel, on your list, as well, and really liked it. Big engineering school, tons of labs, research, competition teams, a lot of great spaces. Also has the co-op program. Obviously you’d have to be ok with being right in the city. DS ultimately decided not to apply because we didn’t think we’d be able to get the cost low enough, compared to in-state schools.
One angle we’ve taken to try and evaluate these schools is to go on LinkedIn, find the school, click on Alumni, search for ‘electrical’ from 2000-2020, and see where their electrical engineering alumni work. It’s fascinating. You can really get a sense of where students end up, and who actually recruits there. If you’re looking for high tech, look for Google, Amazon, Intel, Microsoft, to be high on the list. For defense, look for Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Boeing. For more traditional industry, look for Verizon, PSE&G, Con Ed, etc. But what we ulitimately found is that, besides the super-elite schools, most schools send their kids to local companies. So if you go to school in Jersey, you’ll end up at Lockheed. If you go to school in Maryland, you’ll end up at Northrop Grumman, etc.
One last note - my DS didn’t apply to Maryland because we didn’t think they gave any merit money to OOS. However, if price wasn’t an issue, it would be super high on our list. They have it all - nice campus, amazing facilities, research, programs etc… I wish we had gotten the chance to tour it.
I think that’s it for now! If I think of anything else, I’ll come back and let you know 
Good luck!