<p>Two more LAC size schools on the west coast that you might want to consider are Reed College and the College of Creative Studies.</p>
<p>Unique among LAC’s, Reed has its own nuclear reactor. </p>
<p>The College of Creative Studies is not really a college, but rather something like an intense fast track for a few majors at UCSB. If you’re absolutely, positively, sure about want you want to major in, CCS provides a separate path of classes during freshman and soph. years.</p>
<p>My impression from college visits with my son is that at either of these two places (like HMC), you’d get a level of gung-ho academics that are not really exceeded anywhere, but with different flavors. With Reed you’d get very broad general education requirements that will stretch a wider spectrum of your abilities. With CCS you get fast tracked into lab research, at a big university, in parallel with taking upper division courses as a junior and senior.</p>
<p>Visiting in person to get the rather unique vibes at HMC, Reed, and CCS is a really good idea. You also are picking a place to live for four years. So the different locales of suburb, small city, and big city all have different vibes along with the different academic slants of the schools.</p>