Another Aggie Aero grad here. There are lots of rankings out there, and A&M's Aero department has ranked highly in many of them over the years FWIW. (I don't put a lot of stock in most of these sorts of rankings. College is more what the student makes of it so long as an established, accredited school is chosen!)
My advice is to decide things like public vs. private, large school vs. small school, location (big city vs. small city), etc. and then go from there. I've worked with grads from A&M, Texas, Purdue, Virginia Tech, Ohio State, Iowa State, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, KU, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas State (mechanicals, not aeros), and surely others that don't come to mind. You can get a good education at any of these places IMO.
What sets schools apart for individuals depends on the interests, both academic and extra-curricular, of the individual student. I'm an airplane geek (duh!) and A&M offered some great opportunities with flying aircraft in addition to the traditional classroom and lab work. It was an absolute BARGAIN cost-wise compared to any other option as well. A male to female ratio of 1:1 or 1:1.1 while I was there was nice compared to many other engineering schools. There was a huge student body with 700+ student organizations for every extra-curricular interest under the sun. It was in a medium-sized town that revolved around the university, so there weren't all the big-city hassles (or opportunities). It worked great for me.
The student should consider *why* he wants to go aero... such as for airplanes (like me) or space and then look at each schools current research activities. While that points more to grad work, often times the research areas will trickle down to undergrad classes as well and if you're an airplane geek like me, you'll tire of studying orbital mechanics very quickly.
Or vice-versa. Knowing there was a Flight Test lab at A&M (run by the guy that wrote the flight test engineering textbook!) was nice to know, in addition to a thriving flying club that offered great experience and leadership opportunities for me.
The industry is still cyclical, but there are a lot of new programs going in the aircraft side. Commercial space is also going well. All signs point to shortages of all engineers nationally, so I encourage anyone to strongly consider engineering... we need more!