Chicago has a residential college system too, although my impression is that students don’t necessarily stay as connected to the colleges after the first two years, whereas Rice students typically live off campus junior year and return as seniors, and remain actively involved in their college throughout.
And to @eyemgh’s point, yes, I wasn’t trying to say that Chicago was a comparable engineering school, just that it overlaps in terms of vibe and applicant pool. They diverge in that Chicago doesn’t have enough engineering for many students who are so inclined, whereas Rice has been accused of building its reputation primarily on engineering (and perhaps premed), more so than on humanities and social sciences, even though many of those departments are excellent.
Mudd is interesting in that it’s so STEM-focused and yet does not offer multiple disciplines of engineering except as emphases within the general engineering degree. But its grads do very well, and it could be a reasonable choice for a student who’s undecided about discipline anyway. Not much that’s “business-y” here, though, and while they definitely have varsity athletes who are able to balance sports and the extremely demanding core curriculum, it requires very good time-management to be an athlete at HMC, and a majority of teammates will be non-engineers from Claremont McKenna (and for the women’s teams, Scripps). There’s a lot of fun, Hogwart-ish dorm culture, though.