Auburn has a very good engineering school, and I say that as an Alabama alum. But to hear some of my Auburn buddies talk though, you'd swear it was MIT or Cal Tech
I visited Alabama, UAB, and Auburn when I was looking at local engineering schools. I was also doing summer-student work at Southern Company in Birmingham so I had the chance to meet a lot of engineers. Judging by what I heard from them, they were all pretty much the same, each with the areas where they excelled slightly more than the others. It's probably the same with most engineering schools that are part of a broader university system that's not exclusively tech-focused. In the end, I chose Alabama mostly because I liked the campus more. It had more of that intangible college feel to me personally. But most of my friends went to Auburn. Most of us also switched out of engineering later on

Just keep that in mind when looking at a school. I can't remember what the percentage is of people changing majors over the course of their studies, but last time I checked it was pretty high.