See if there is a FIRST robotics team nearby at a high school. I did not participate in FIRST at that age (my interests were elsewhere), but my friends who did

See if there is a FIRST robotics team nearby at a high school. I did not participate in FIRST at that age (my interests were elsewhere), but my friends who did say it was a pivotal experience for them. You learn lots of hands on skills, get to work with experienced industry mentors, and also make friends with similar interests. There are many components to designing the robots, so they can try out and see what they like. I’m not sure how teams are in the pandemic, but it is probably worth it to try! Another caveat: depending what you mean by computer engineering, I’m not sure if many FIRST teams actually design their own chips. But they certainly do a lot of closely related stuff. In general, a concrete application seems to be a great motivation. I resisted my parents’ efforts to get me interested in programming until I realized it could help me make Minecraft mods.