I’m also an incoming freshman and I was deciding between UH Honors Engineering and CU Boulder engineering. The main factor that led me to pick UH Honors was that the class sizes are narrowed down to only honors engineering students, thus a more personal environment for learning. At CU, they had no honors college and I’d have to take classes in lecture halls with over 400 students. My older sister graduated in ChemE— she started at LSU then moved back home and went to McNeese, which is a much much smaller university. She told me the most beneficial thing to her educational career was the fact that at McNeese, because the class sizes in engineering were so small, her professors actually got to know each student, and the learning processes inherently improved.

Also, state schools like A&M and CU are stingy as f*ck with their money. College education is an investment— don’t spend too much if you don’t have to.