Research is all over the place. East coast has MIT and Harvard.

Well, MIT, sure. But is Harvard really a remarkable CS, engineering, or applied science research institution comparable to Berkeley or Stanford?

It's interesting what happens when you look at rankings of engineering programs, especially at the grad level. You start to see more large state institutions, as well as more technical institutions, with a heavier concentration in the mid west or west coast.

The ivies are hardly missing in action, especially Cornell (should probably also say Columbia) but Texas, Washington, many UC campuses, certainly Michigan... I'd probably put all these, certainly at the graduate engineering level, at or above the ivies. And the ivy that really seems to be a heavy hitter here, Cornell, again shows how much things have shuffled up once you go to engineering.