@brooklynlydia. Yes, look one notch down. There are so many incredible engineering schools from the the 20th place down to 50. There are some really good ones below that. Through the top 100 or so. We discovered this when my son was looking at engineering schools. I made him look at many different levels of schools and we both found some very excellent programs that gave merit to boot.
I think too many people only look at the top name programs. This is a big mistake in my mind. Good luck to your son.