Have you looked at the Campus Pride top LGBTQ friendly colleges list? It doesn’t cover everyone (heard it’s a time consuming processes to get on their list,) but it and their list of “colleges that have LGBTQ housing” helped. Niche has been really useful too. Look under the category of Diversity. We started with the Campus Pride list and eliminated anything that wasn’t in the Northeast. (The region our son wanted.) We also looked for towns and areas that were LGBTQ friendly. Is any place 100% safe? No. But we also didn’t want our son and his future bf beaten up for daring to hold hands as they walked to the movies or a local eatery. Some colleges don’t offer LGBTQ or gender neutral housing for for freshman, but we figure it would be an option if our son got harassed in the regular dorms. A graduate at one college told our son that if he has any problems with a homophobic roommate to contact the school’s LGBTQ org if housing starts taking forever to get him switched to another room. The housing is really important if you’re genderqueer or transgender. (A concern for my son’s younger best friend who is watching his college search closely.)
I hope that helps a little. I’m so glad there’s another thread on this as there aren’t many. Our kids simply can’t rely on “Well see if there’s an LGBTQ club on campus, and if there’s not you can start one!” If a campus is known for their homophobia and/or transphobia, then it’s not going to be a safe and welcoming place. We eliminated one school because while their organization was very active and making serious strides in making the campus more safe for LGBTQ students, the campus still had a number of homophobic hate crimes and there are news articles about how it used to be one of the most homophobic campuses. (It was in the Northeast too.)
Oh, and for every school, we also googled “is ____ university/college LGBTQ friendly.” You could do the reverse with “is ____ college homophobic.”
HTH and good luck. 