Thanks for these comments–good points on both sides about the size question. (And a fair point to call me on the comment about PhDs from the 1990s!)
As for why LACs along with MIT: I guess I’m just looking for “safety” schools that are still strong options. Living in Michigan we could certainly apply to other state schools, but I’ll admit to a bias against large state schools with a strong party culture–and, having spent four years as a grad student at Michigan State, I would never want my son to go there as an undergrad. (An unfair bias, perhaps, and I know that UMich is also large with its own party culture–but I saw the scene at MSU firsthand.)
Looking for smaller strong colleges, though, brought me to the question about strong CS programs in small schools. Some LACs that are very strong in traditional Humanities or Sciences don’t seem to have much of an emphasis on CS–in part because they don’t have graduate programs, as Simba9 notes. Oberlin, for example, looks like they have 6 FT faculty (and, I must say, a website that really needs an update: https://www.cs.oberlin.edu/).
I guess I wondered about strong LAC options I might be overlooking. But maybe the better option is to apply to a few somewhat-less-competitive schools that are still strong in CS–Case Western, maybe Purdue, …?