For a STEM degree a “step up”… CMU, GaTech, Hopkins. He’ll need a 1500 SAT for these.
RPI is a “step up”, but they are lesser known.
The same level as UT… Washington, Michigan, UIUC
Step down… Minn, Purdue, CASE, Wisconsin
For a nice university environment with UT level STEM… Rice, Duke, NW. Rice is too small though.
Expensive privates… Northeastern, Washington U, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame… for STEM these are a step down.
I don’t know enough about Stevens & Rochester to comment on them.
I wouldn’t say CMU, GT, Hopkins and RPI are a step up and I certainly wouldn’t say Wisconsin is a step down.
In order to make those claims, you’d need to know what criteria are being compared. Rankings say nothing about the college experience or about the post college experience. All of those schools are peers with UT, each with its strengths and weaknesses.
If he is not sure of his engineering major, schools that are a step up would be those where changing to a different engineering major does not require another competitive admission process (although you may have to apply to the engineering division. Schools where this appears to be the case are listed below (but verify with the schools by contacting directly if the information is not clearly stated on the web site):
Case Western Reserve
Duke
Georgia Tech (only the first major change is without restriction)
Johns Hopkins (except biomedical engineering)
U of Michigan
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Rennsselaer
Rice
U of Rochester
Stevens
Vanderbilt
Washington U
The following (like UT Austin) admit to specific engineering majors, but changing to a different engineering major may require high grades or GPA or be competitive, depending on how popular the new major is relative to the department’s capacity (check web sites and/or contact directly to find out how competitive each major is):
Carnegie Mellon
U of Illinois
Northeastern
The following (like Texas A&M) admit to a pre-engineering status. Admission to a major is dependent on meeting a GPA requirement that may be higher than 2.0 or passing a competitive admission process (check web sites and/or contact directly to find out how competitive each major is):
U of Minnesota
Purdue
U of Washington
The following admits to the major, but has progression requirements that may include technical GPA as high as 3.5 to stay in the major after the first year:
U of Wisconsin
"For a STEM degree a “step up”… CMU, GaTech, Hopkins. He’ll need a 1500 SAT for these.
RPI is a “step up”, but they are lesser known.
The same level as UT… Washington, Michigan, UIUC"
None of those are step ups from UT for ChemE given UT’s ties to oil/gas and overall reputation. For overall STEM, only 3-4 would be a clear step-up over UT, Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, maybe Michigan.
I was aware that the auto admission to UT is general. As at most schools, Engineering admission is very competitive. It would be up to the student to make it in. If not, there are a lot of other quality majors at UT.