Would I be better off going to an out-of-state college with a great engineering program, or an in-state college with a good engineering program?

Stay in state save money and live at home and commute if possible:)

I've hired dozens of great engineers from all engineering schools. If you can stay in state to reduce costs I would. Just make sure it has the engineering specialty you are looking for. Being saddled with a $100,000 student loan will postpone owning a house and other things including saving for retirement. Good luck!

Darryl,

Great question. Here are some thoughts to consider.

How much have you saved up for college?
How much can your parents afford to provide for the five to six years it will take you to graduate?
How fast do you learn, (In other words, how well have you developed your study skills to be able to learn the required material in the time that is allocated? (time efficiency)
Where do you rank in your class?
How much debt are your comfortable with?
Where do you want to work when you graduate?

My experience is that my parents could not afford to send me out of state, so I went to the university closest to my home (I could walk there in less than an hour). I worked part time and paid my own tuition, fees and books (this was before tuition amounts were so inflated). The engineering program I went to was pretty good, but my grades were not high enough in my core curriculum for me to qualify to get into the computer science program, so I went into the electrical engineering program.

After I graduated, my job was stable for about three years, but jobs are not nearly as stable now as they were back then.
personally, i am not comfortable with a load of debt, and given how unstable everything in right now, I suggest you think very carefully and seriously about getting a student loan.

In my career, I worked at at least two companies that hire people from known good universities, and there is a difference between folks that graduate from MIT (or similar) and from other programs.
So if you are confident in your ability to keep up with the demands of the upper-level classes in the outstanding engineering program of the out-of-state school, feel free to investigate those programs.
If you feel confident in your ability (or your parents ability) to pay back student loans, feel free to investigate those.

Find out what companies recruit at the colleges you are considering attending. Some companies do not recruit at some colleges because they are looking for graduates with better credentials.

Consider what Dave Ramsey has to say about incurring student loans. http://www.daveramsey.com/home/
search for "student loans". when i searched, there were over 1000 items returned from the search.

I am aware of a company that helps parents and kids figure out what school to go to. Basically, they figure out what your ability to pay is, (They used your FAFSA, and show you how to declare your assets in a way that maximizes the school you can afford and minimizes how much the "family contribution" are.) Then they take your criteria for school and put it into their software and give you a list of six to eight universities that you can afford to go to based on your ability to pay. Sometimes they can figure out a way, with university-provided tuition assistance, programs to get you into a better out-of-state school, for the same price as an in-state school.

This is pretty expensive ($3000 - $5000), but if they save you and your parents $20,000 to $30,000 over your time at college, it is probably worth it.
http://www.freecollegeplanning.org/

It honestly comes down to money before or after college.

If you're determined to work for google or amazon, then contact their HR departments to see where they tend to recruit from.

If you're determined to just get a job, look at your best cost options and pick the school that advertises a high ROI (return on investment).

For example, search on NJIT ROI. The New Jersey Institute of Technology is reasonably priced for NJ residents and the return on investment for going there makes that school a very viable option for in-state students.

Basically, you don't want to have a debt that even the best job can't pay for. Play with a loan calculator. If you have a $100,000 loan you'll be paying $1000 a month (which is the equivalent of housing in some places).