Thank you very much for all your help. She just got back from her visit to MIT, and as I hoped, it did help her think through what she wanted. (she didn’t get to visit any other schools – the way these fly-ins work is that they book the flights, transfer kids to and from the airport, and have them scheduled the whole time – awesome opportunity, but not flexible).
She would be happy to go to MIT, and plans to apply. Now she needs other schools that has what she likes about the nearly-impossible-to-get-in one.
Size: She came back from MIT less worried about size, and says she thinks it’s a bit on the large side, but only a little. She’d like a bit smaller, but is willing to look at larger schools as well. I think she was reassured by the sub-sections and smaller labs of the big intro classes.
Techy: She came back wanting to look more into other STEM-focused schools. This is partly for the breadth of course offering, and maybe in large part because she really liked the STEM-focused vibe of the students and the place. Now says she’s not as interested in liberal arts schools. I think she spoke to one staff member who once worked at Brown and told her that it was more writing-focused, which she didn’t like. Not much to go on, but I think the actual takeaway for her here is that perhaps the STEM focus is more important to her than the straight up number of non-STEM requirements.
Majors: She liked that MIT has a “computer science and molecular biology” major, and really wants a way to combine those two fields in a major (I guess she could always double major, but probably more feasible to go somewhere where that isn’t the only option). Data science may work for this too, I don’t know enough about it. I think she finds the types of things that researchers do applying cs and math to bio to be more interesting than the research listed under either cs or math by itself. So the biology department needs to be good. She wants the math program to be good enough to not run out of math and have interesting math classes to keep taking, but is OK if that isn’t combined directly with bio and cs into a major.
Undergraduate Research: very important
Student life: Would like it if a lot of students live on campus, or if it’s at least possible to do so. Wants geeky board game/RPG clubs, but I expect those are reasonably common. Does not care about location other than the key trans-safe factor.
WPI, which she’d already researched a little, seems like an obvious one that fits what she might be looking for, and probably has a decent shot to get into.
The University of Rochester looks good too.
I’ve taken notes on what’s been mentioned here so far, but wondering if there other tech-type schools that might fit. (I did a search and found lots of schools with “tech” in the name, but I don’t know much about any of them).