You might want to look at Pitt. Rolling admissions and a great school in a fun city. Thinking that if BU is appealing, this could be too, and you would have an answer early enough in the cycle to avoid lots of unnecessary safety applications.
Some of the smaller schools that have strong STEM to consider include WPI, RIT, RPI, Rose-Hulman, and Union. Pretty different from each other, but most would check the box. And there are others too.
As to a predicted score of 41 vs 42, I suspect it doesn’t really matter. Either indicates high achievement and mastery of material. My favorite analogy here is that the schools aren’t building an Olympic relay team where they need the 4 fastest runners (i.e. highest stats). It’s more like a soccer team – everyone, except the goalie, is going to have to be able to run fast and for a long time. But some need to shoot, some need to defend, some need to be left-footed, they all need to be self-less, etc. So after clearing the “runs fast enough” hurdle, the decision is made based on other things. And so it goes with schools as well.