Your son is a VERY attractive candidate. Being a high-stats URM opens A LOT of doors for him and is a better hook than curing cancer 
. He should choose from among the schools that meet 100% of need. Lots of great choices there. He’ll also have UT-Austin as an amazing back-up.
He should get his applications in as early as possible. He will be invited to many “diversity days,” where colleges pay for students who will add to campus diversity to visit overnight in the fall.
I agree with the suggestions of NESCACs (Williams, Hamilton, Bowdoin, Colby et al), particularly in that they bring more information (i.e., top schools he might not have otherwise considered) to your son’s search. The Claremonts would serve as a complement to this theme, and should also be considered.
Rice plays in Division 1 and offers athletic scholarships but also has the academic rigor you seek for your son. If he is a superior athlete being recruited by the well known programs, Rice may not think it is in his league so has not approached him. However, there are terrific athletes/scholars that come out of Rice. Look up Christian Covington who plays for the Houston Texans. Rice has the SOAR fly in program for URMs. Your son should contact the admissions office to learn how to apply for it. The applications are usually due in July http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/rice-university/2093458-soar-2018.html
I was all excited thinking there was someone even younger than me going to college this year and then I realized I wouldn’t be 18 till March lol
On topic, your son actually sounds pretty interesting from the OP, and I hope he is happy wherever he goes. 
@Publisher - your view of Davidson is outdated. Yes, all political views but there are by far more moderates/liberals than self-described conservatives. One third nonwhite students and I would be shocked if students had confederate flags. My heavens. There was an unfort. recent event where a student was exposed for anti-semitic online postings, but the campus rallied against hate with huge turnouts for rallies, vigils, etc. and that student left campus.
OP – my D is a first-year at Davidson and according to her the athletes at Davidson are students first and athletes second. Worth a look!
The Confederate flags were in students dorm rooms. Has the school made a rule against this ? They were certainly there a few years ago.
Your son sounds similar to my son! Don’t discount the Ivies as your son would be a good fit for them plus they offer great aid, school sizes are right for his liking and the opportunity to be among a cohort of students like himself academically and athletically is something worth researching.
I’d say the same for NESCAC schools.
We had no idea when we started the college process with S1 so we looked at all viable options which included LACS, large publics and small privates and in the end an Ivy was the best fit.
@ Publisher - I have no idea about rules, but my (liberal) D is a student there and she’d certainly know b/c it’s a small campus and there’s no tolerance for that symbol of oppression. Maybe a decade ago when folks were less locked in on the issue, but I doubt even a few years ago that would have been tolerated by the broader student population. If any student put that up, they would get serious grief from other students and be a true outlier.
Also, btw, Davidson is not lakeside. It does have a lake campus for recreation that’s about a 10 minute drive from campus. You obviously don’t really know this school.
Less than a decade ago. And with the current political climate…?
Never said that there were not liberal students at Davidson College. But all students do not go into everyone else’s dorm room.
Davidson used to have a lot of conservative, religious students as well. I find that comforting. Admissions commented that they had plenty of students who wanted to enter the ministry. Not sure if still true. Used to award scholarships for those interested in becoming ministers.
Regardless, this is off topic & not worth discussing further in this thread.
@ Publisher – Word travels on a small campus.
I’m not aware of any scholarships for ministers, but certainly possible. If so, it’d be for Presbyterian USA (with whom the college is affiliated) which is a pretty liberal mainstream church (supports gay marriage, etc.) – not conservative.
Davidson is not a liberal college like Wesleyen, Grinnell or Reed, but it’s not conservative either.
Yes, I know. I have been to Davidson many times–but not in the last several years. Beautiful campus. Charming town. Love the lake.
Conservative & liberal are relative terms. Again, this is off topic so I am going to exit this discussion.
@Publisher, thanks for the clarification, but I knew that you weren’t trying to label him an athlete. If you can’t tell, athletic recruitment has become a sensitive topic, so it doesn’t take much to send me off onto a tangent on that subject. I’m not trying to be irrationally secretive or dramatic, I’d just like to ensure his anonymity online, and focus on academic and social aspects of the search. We’ll take all of the information that we’ve learned here, build a list of viable prospects, and figure out which are athletic fits as well. Your insights are very useful to us.
@brantly, he will definitely start early with his apps!
@Houston1021, he absolutely loves Rice. As a matter of fact, his athletic idol is currently at Rice! His only hesitation to reaching out to Rice himself was that he hadn’t taken the SAT. Now that he’s taken it, he’s going to reach out. I can say that, as it stands today, if he gets admission to Rice, he would definitely attend. We’re just keeping the likelihood of admission in perspective. With such low admission rate, we’re going to find some other options that he would love. We’ve done several ‘unofficial’ visits, and he is sold. Like you mentioned, Rice is DI, but their student athletes are, in fact, students scholars.
@DodosAreDead, omg, you’re a baby! Don’t take offense to that, please, I’m just saying that you are very young! Much luck to you in wherever you land as well!
The NESCACs may conflict with some of the stated preferences, since (a) they may be smaller than the desired size range, (b) some of them may be in isolated areas, (c) there may be a higher emphasis on sports than desired (at a small college, a very high percentage of students are athletes), and (d) some of them have reputations of relatively heavy alcohol consumption (and many of them have many of the characteristics associated with high levels of drinking).
Question for @nomatter : How strong is the interest in engineering? If significant, it may eliminate a large number of colleges. Also, strong interest in math may limit some colleges’ appeal due to small math departments with limited offerings.
He’d be competitive for nearly all or any schools. Ivy+ schools as well. Add recruiting and he has a really good shot almost anywhere.
I find this thread interesting because it is so tough to get a handle on this applicant other than he is a black male with good SAT scores & excellent grades & outstanding class rank who has no preference for a major & does not want his only meaningful ECs (athletics) considered. Wants a school with at least 4,000 students, but no more than 15,000 students & prefers a non-drinking environment.
Minimum student body size of 4,000 eliminates all LACs.
Other than BYU & the Service Academies, there will be drinking.
Rice, Emory & SMU ? After thinking a bit more, neither Emory or SMU would work. That leaves just Rice. And maybe the University of Tulsa. Nope. Tulsa is too small.
Without athletics, his best option may be the University of Texas at Austin–which is an outstanding opportunity, but may be too large in terms of number of students.
There may be a few LACs bigger than 4,000 (e.g. Truman State, though that is in a rural area), and the Claremont colleges being co-located makes for a social environment much larger than any of the individual colleges.
I know your son is just a junior in high school, but if he is undecided as to major & willing to give up sports, would he consider taking a gap year ? Since he has no meaningful ECs, a gap year spent doing something worthwhile could enhance his attractiveness to schools beyond his status as an intelligent URM.
P.S. The correct answer is Vanderbilt University. He should get a merit scholarship based on URM status & his academics. 6.800 students. Diverse. 48% white.10% black 10%hispanic 5% multiracial. 50/50 male/female Gorgeous campus. Outstanding academics. But there is a very large Greek presence.
@ucbalumnus, I think of the potential majors that I’ve mentioned, engineering might be the least attractive to him. The problem (and this is truly the problem) he does not know what he wants to major in, and he wants to go into college as a blank slate. He might go in any direction. He’s actually excited about taking the general ed/university requirements, just so he can take a broad range of classes on for subjects that interest him. I don’t doubt that he will find something that moves him, and he’ll go full steam ahead with, but he doesn’t seem to know what that is today. :-/
If engineering is unlikely as an interest, then that can simplify college choice, by not requiring eliminating colleges without engineering.
It is ok to be undecided, although he should be aware that some majors like math and physics are highly sequenced, so including those courses in his first year schedule is necessary (but that still leaves space for other courses in other areas). A college good for undecided students will have the range of majors of interest, sufficient resources in each such major that he will not run out of courses, and not require highly competitive admission to declare those majors.
Note also that a typical liberal arts major will take up about 35-50% of undergraduate course work, so there will be plenty of schedule space for additional out-of-major courses if he wants.
Given what you wrote about him in reply #36, it seems like he may also be interested in philosophy.
@Publisher, just to clarify, my son is, actually, willing to give up sports, but he isn’t planning to give up sports. I’m asking that athletics (as a search qualifier) not be considered here in this thread. I guess the best way to describe it might be that so far, his college search has been overly saturated with discussions with schools who want him for athletics, but don’t feel like fits for one reason or another, outside of athletics. We want to find the schools that he wants for academics and social fit. Then, we’ll take that list and figure out which of those schools also offer the athletic fit that he’s looking for.
He’s never mentioned wanting to take a gap year, and I’ve never brought it up. I’ll be brutally honest and say that I don’t want him to. I want him to go straight to college. I’ve spent his entirely life building the ideology that college, for an undergrad degree is not ‘optional’, rather, it naturally follows high school diploma. A bachelor’s degree is the minimum benchmark. I know, logically, that a gap year doesn’t mean that he won’t go to college. But, in this world, in this political climate in this country, I’m just going to be blunt… There is literally no way that I’m going to so much as hint to my young black male to graduate from high school, and not be on a college campus come fall.
We’re not asking for a “dry” campus, just maybe not a total party school. I graduated from Michigan, and heaven knows there was enough drugs and alcohol available for those who were seeking it, but it’s a big enough school that those of us who weren’t had plenty of fun things to do, places to go, and sober (or sober enough) people to hang out with. That’s all we’re looking for, really-- options to have fun, and be social without drugs and alcohol.