My son attended a school a bit over half the size of the OP’s target school. I actually suggested he apply there. He is ridiculously bright and severely dyslexic and I thought he would benefit from small classes where the professors would quickly see how bright he was rather than waiting for mid-terms and finals (which might not be the best way to show his intellectual strengths). Although he did really well on tests, he got both a lot of faculty attention and a fair degree of flexibility to accommodate his dyslexia and to pursue his interests (faculty agreed to supervise quite a number of independent study courses). He never would have received the faculty time/attention at larger schools. Academically, he left with a 3.96 GPA, summa cum laude, several prizes for outstanding academic performance and started a company while he was in college. He made great friends there – he’s currently visiting from grad school on the West Coast to be groomsman in a college friend’s wedding (actually both bride and groom are friends) and two of his roommates are staying with us for a couple of days. He would tell you he loved the school and was glad he went there.
@ucbalumnus’s advice about availability of courses in likely majors is well-taken. If my son had done a single major, he might have run out of courses in his major. He probably would have done independent studies. However, he was a triple major (math/econ/behavioral econ) and so took enough courses to major in math and in econ (plus some psych courses) but couldn’t go as deeply in either field as he might have and hence did not run out of courses.
There was a fair degree of drinking at his school. He was not a big drinker and had some sub-free friends in his core group. I doubt the drinking was worse than at my Ivy alma mater.
My daughter began at a large university (17K students). She appeared to like it socially but didn’t really like the large lecture/test/mid-term/final format. Her plan was to major in biology and she was taking chemistry, math, biology, developmental psychology and a language. I’ll skip a long story and tell you that she was admitted to another school in a five year BSN/MSN program. The school has about 1700 students, I think, with nursing being one of the larger majors. She didn’t love all of her professors but really learned a phenomenal amount and again, due to small class sizes, knew her professors. She did clinical work and preceptorships in major teaching hospitals as well as other health care facilities and seems to have done very well as doctors she met at these hospitals would come up to her and say, “You are so bright. You should go to medical school.” (She chose the nurse practitioner router because she didn’t like the stress and competitiveness of pre-med/med school and also because she wants a career that makes it easier to have a family). She received her MSN and passed her Nurse Practitioner boards just before she turned 23. I suspect she would tell you that she didn’t love the school but a) got a great education; b) was happy that she got such great training (sometimes despite the school) because she was in a city with terrific teaching hospitals; and c) made a number of deep friends.
She hated living in the dorm at her second school and moved off-campus after the first semester. She socialized primarily with kids in her programs – but she also worked so hard (she always had a job on top of school) – that she had a more limited social life than I might have liked. She and her friends did drink when they finished the semester or passed key exams, but again I don’t think it was out of the ordinary.