I think the intense core scares him off a bit. That’s why he is considering Pomona. He definitely likes Brown’s lack of core requirements.
His full list right now is:
Brown
Carleton
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Macalester
Pomona
Reed
Swarthmore
University of Chicago
University of Michigan
We live in Missouri, but he has no desire to stay here. We know that those are reach schools, he is trying to decide if he wants to apply early decision to one of them. We have been told that SLACs focus more on undergrads than larger universities since they don’t have grad students. However, we want to make sure that the schools have enough higher level math courses for him.