My daughter has 3 options at the moment. What do you think? Appreciate if you are from one of these colleges and share if you feel strongly about why she should or should not go there. Thank You!
If your daughter goes to West Point, after graduation she will manage aerospace contracts but not do engineering work. By the time she finishes her military commitment she will be behind her engineering peers working in the industry. If she prefers management, West Point plus military experience can't be beat. (My daughter is an AE engineer and loves her job as a flight test engineer.)
UIUC has best reputation for aero out of those. Never seen someone from West Point or CMU with an aerospace degree in industry. CMU would be my second choice only because if she changes her mind on major it would be good for other things like computer science.
Unfortunately it's not realistic to transfer to CS at CMU and it's only gotten harder in recent years given the class size limits. Also at least while I was there, there was no aerospace program, only a mechanical engineering program, though I know plenty of folks who work in aerospace after. source: i'm a cmu grad