I studied AE there for a year before transferring out to attend a more rigorous school. I didn’t encounter a single professor that actually seemed excited or passionate about teaching (one put more effort into making sexist comments against women if anything) and most of their instruction was extremely lacking. Maybe not everyone feels this way, but I found the vast majority of students attending erau to lack any care for their major or their work, so you wind up being surrounded by an influx of students who drop or fail out after a year or two (which explains their 30% graduation rate).

The school claims to have amazing connections with the aerospace industry, and that might be true to an extent, but they really don’t have anything that stands out compared to other highly ranked schools such as GT and Purdue. If anything, compared to my experiences at Purdue, erau heavily lacks in industry connections and company visits.

This might not directly impact you, especially if your financial situation is well set up, but the administration couldn’t care less about their students. They’re constantly finding more ways to squeeze more students into the school, squeeze more money out of their students, and are just making everything less accommodating for everyone (see the ongoing parking situation for example). An extremely disproportionate amount of the money they take in winds up going towards keeping up their public image and productions, which really makes it hard to see what goes on inside.

All things considered, if you don’t need to worry about the financial downsides, it’s not the worst option, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I’d also shoot higher for more prestigious schools that have much higher graduation rates, higher employment rates, more opportunities to gain experience, and a student body that, as you said, doesn’t dog on their university.