Interesting. My favorite patent attorney at work had a eng degree from Purdue. He was both smart and savvy (and ended up a senior VP). I still email him back and forth on occasion, he just retired. (To be a patent attorney, you must have a specific STEM undergrad degree.)
One factor for Tech is the Hope Scholarship. It pays your tuition if you qualify, and anyone getting into Tech would qualify (in state only). So, students who might have considered "MIT" in the past could lean to staying home now. This has also favored UGA, perhaps even more. UGA was a "middlin' school" when I was there, now it's a top 20 public.
I was in sophomore org chem classes with "pre meds". We started with 180+ in the class and finished the year with 33 or so. I figured most of the 33 were headed to med school. That was the first course in college that I really really liked. The professor was superb. Not surprisingly because I liked it a lot, I did well.
Until my last year in HS I wanted to be a civil engineer or architect, so I figured I'd go to Tech. UGA offered me a small scholarship and that kind of flipped me. Anyway, I digress, we obviously had a lot of engineers where I worked from Purdue. Most seemed pretty good to very good, to me.
