This is incredibly helpful!! We have looked at quite a few of these but there are many new ones here. Thank you!!
By this do you mean all the schools on your list are LACs that are also ABET accredited for engineering?
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You may be a good candidate for a major in public policy, which relies on the fields of political science, economics and philosophy for its foundation. This site, for example, suggests LACs such as Trinity, Gettysburg and Dickinson:
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Look into St Olaf, especially for its Conversations program
It sounds like the perfect fit for what you want wrt vibe, size, focus on discussion, humanities/social science/stem mix ..
In my original post I said,
I referenced the size of the undergraduate populations rather than specifically calling them out as liberal arts colleges because that category is more fluid and people don’t all have the same definitions for them. In looking at the colleges your family was already looking at, it seemed as though the vibe was more important than the actual definition (as Le Moyne and Christopher Newport are classified as regional universities, and William & Mary as a national university).
This piece by U.S. News and World Report does a respectable job of explaining some of the differences between the categories.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/ranking-category-definitions
The Carnegie Classification system was updated in 2025 (after USNWR had started collecting its info for its latest edition), but you can see some of the forthcoming classification changes: 2025 Institutional Classification - CARNEGIE CLASSIFICATION OF INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION
But to make this a bit more concrete, I’ve gone ahead and organized (most of?) the schools that @Bill_Marsh, @jym626, and I suggested by size (noting that St. John’s College is out of order), and listed the number of areas a school is ABET-accredited for.
| School | # of ABET-accredited areas | Undergrad Population |
|---|---|---|
| Eastern Mennonite (VA) | 1 | 791 |
| Carroll (MT) | 1 | 1,112 |
| Allegheny (PA ) | 0 | 1,171 |
| Randolph-Macon (VA) | 1 | 1,643 |
| College of Wooster | 0 | 1,738 |
| Hobart Williams Smith | 0 | 1,794 |
| Union | 4 | 2,065 |
| Trinity (CT) | 1 | 2,204 |
| Mannhattan U. | 7 | 2,744 |
| Lafayette | 6 | 2,775 |
| U. of Portland (OR) | 4 | 2,986 |
| Penn State-Behrend | 12 | 3,244 |
| York (PA ) | 5 | 3,369 |
| Fort Lewis (CO) | 2 | 3,392 |
| Loyola Maryland | 2 | 3,881 |
| SUNY Geneseo | 0 | 3,881 |
| Bucknell (PA ) | 8 | 3,920 |
| Seattle U. (WA) | 4 | 4,078 |
| Gonzaga (WA) | 6 | 5,281 |
| Case Western (OH) | 12 | 6,528 |
| SUNY New Paltz | 3 | 6,862 |
| U. of Wyoming | 9 | 8,130 |
| U. of New Hampshire | 12 | 11,355 |
| U. of Vermont | 5 | 12,276 |
| St. John’s College (NM & MD) | 0 | 368 & 471 |
I would highly recommend looking at each school in College Navigator under the Programs/Majors tabs to see how a school’s distribution of first majors looks to see if it’s got a distribution that you think aligns with a liberal arts college. Note that I indicated first majors, as second (or third) majors are not included in College Navigator with respect to students who double/triple major.
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Husband, I and D26 were really impressed with Wooster. Campus was really pretty and nicely laid out, students seemed really engaged, and the food was almost the best we’ve had at a college.
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Look at Goucher
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This is incredibly helpful!! Thank you!!
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