Right, I was bringing up Chicago just as a vibe comparison, not as a suggestion to add to the list.
And I initially brought up Mudd before the OP refined her description of the “typical on campus experience” being preferred. A student with her son’s profile, on paper, could be someone who would love HMC. Seems like perhaps not in this case, though. Again, I was mostly trying to illustrate how the Rice vibe tilts in that direction.
As an overall trend, it seems as if the schools that have both strong engineering and D3 sports tend to be more “nerdy” than “mainstream.” (e.g. Mudd, Caltech, MIT, Hopkins, RPI/WPI/RIT, RHIT, UChicago, CMU, UTD…) The more “mainstream” options are more likely to be D1. So if D3+mainstream+engineering is desired, WashU seems like it’s, if not a “unicorn,” at least a little bit lonely in that sector of the Venn diagram!