@Oregon2016, I’m not sure why you’re under the impression that a LAC has to have a particular gender distribution or major distribution or have to draw from the same applicant pool as other LACs. Nothing in the definition stated above mentions any of that.
The applicant pool fixation is particularly strange to me. So, by your reasoning, if Brown’s applicant pool has more overlap with Vassar than with Caltech, does that make Brown a LAC?
Granted, LAC is kind of a marketing term. Yes, the undergraduate student experience at Mudd, Caltech, and Cooper Union is more similar to each other (even though USNews puts them in to 3 separate categories) than any of them are to Vassar. But then, all 3 of them are more similar to each other than any of them are to UMich either. So does that mean that Caltech isn’t a research U? It’s actually as tiny and close-knit as a LAC.