<p>Perhaps a good “intellectual index” by proxy is to look at enrollment in decidedly pre-professional majors across a range of colleges and universities. How many kids are in the business school or pre-med/health schools compared to the school’s liberal arts programs? I’m a little bit wary of tossing out more highly selectives for the sake of tossing around names without a sense of the OP’s story, though I think it’s helpful for other readers on the thread to get a sense of the schools that tend to be mentioned together.</p>
<p>On the other hand, my own in-state option isn’t ever going to be “known” as an intellectual school, but it definitely had the low-key, talk-about-philosophy-in-the-middle-of-the-woods opportunities I was looking for. </p>
<p>(That’s one thing I wasn’t able to do at Chicago… wander off into the deep woods in the middle of the night…)</p>