To give you a frame of reference with the schools on your list or that have been mentioned here (or on the other thread by @Catcherinthetoast). I also added a few based on what you’ve indicated.
This list is sorted by the percentage of classes with more than 50 students (I used the aggregator I linked above). As a caveat, reporting on class size data is imperfect. I suspect that most schools do it the “right” way but some schools have been known to game the system by listing every recitation section as a different class in order to improve their numbers. So a student might be in a 290-person lecture 2 days a week but it has 15 recitation sections with fewer than 20 students, and the school will count that as 16 classes (i.e. 6% with 50+ and 94% with less than 20), when most people would really consider it 1 class. That said, this is the best we can do at a distance. (Talk to students at the schools to find out the real experience.)
| School | Classes under 20 | Classes w/20-49 | Classes w/50+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trinity (TX) | 68% | 32% | 0% |
| U. of Richmond | 76% | 24% | 0% |
| Wake Forest | 59% | 40% | 1% |
| Holy Cross | 62% | 38% | 1% |
| Fordham | 52% | 48% | 1% |
| Williams | 71% | 27% | 2% |
| Providence | 59% | 39% | 2% |
| Fairfield | 41% | 57% | 2% |
| Amherst | 66% | 31% | 3% |
| Texas Christian | 39% | 56% | 5% |
| Georgetown | 60% | 33% | 7% |
| Northwestern | 78% | 16% | 7% |
| Duke | 71% | 22% | 7% |
| U. of Miami (FL) | 52% | 41% | 7% |
| NYU | 58% | 32% | 9% |
| Yale | 72% | 19% | 9% |
| Lehigh | 45% | 46% | 9% |
| William & Mary | 44% | 48% | 9% |
| U. of Notre Dame | 60% | 31% | 9% |
| Vanderbilt | 61% | 31% | 9% |
| Rice | 66% | 25% | 9% |
| Southern Methodist | 56% | 33% | 11% |
| Stanford | 69% | 20% | 11% |
| Miami (OH) | 35% | 53% | 12% |
| U. of Southern California | 62% | 26% | 12% |
| U. of North Carolina | 44% | 44% | 13% |
| Harvard | 71% | 17% | 13% |
| U. of Rochester | 66% | 22% | 13% |
| Indiana | 37% | 47% | 16% |
| U. of Virginia | 49% | 36% | 16% |
| Ohio State | 40% | 42% | 18% |
| U. of Nebraska | 34% | 47% | 18% |
| UPenn | 59% | 21% | 20% |
| U. of Wisconsin - Madison | 44% | 34% | 23% |
| U. of Texas | 39% | 37% | 24% |
Schools that were not mentioned on this thread or the other thread include Wake Forest, Vanderbilt, U. of Miami, and U. of Notre Dame because they seem as though they might hit a lot of your interests (Duke, Vandy & Notre Dame as low probability, Wake & U. of Miami as lower probability, maybe even a toss-up for Miami). I also added U. of Nebraska which has a surprising number of opportunities related to investment banking (Warren Buffet, anyone?), has the big sports you like, and its Raikes Scholar program combining business and computer science might be of interest, too, since you were hoping for some flexibility. Nebraska would be an extremely likely admit, but Raikes would be more of a “match” type offering.
Most of the highly selective/rejective colleges (admission rates sub-20%), either do not have honors programs and/or you should not expect an invitation (you might, but it would definitely be in the reach category). So class sizes for those schools are likely to look pretty similar to above. At schools like Indiana and Nebraska, you’d be likely to get into the honors programs and thus have smaller class sizes than shown here. And I added in a couple of top liberal arts colleges (Williams & Amherst). Williams is more on the rural side but sports are big there, but they’re here to show a bit more of what the college landscape is like.
With this data, how important is class size to you? Does it influence what schools remain (or are added) to your list?
With respect to your interest in sports, do you want sports that you can watch on ESPN? Or are these sports that you want to go to the stadium and cheer on your school with lots of others? And do you care if your team is winning, or just that it’s a festive environment and/or is on tv?