By the way, this seems like a handy place to quickly note that I think for some people (like my S24, in fact), there is some concern about whether an isolated small LAC might end up feeling limiting eventually. Many people end up loving the experience anyway, but I can understand the concern. So my suggestion was he might want to check out LACs in areas where there are a lot of other colleges/universities, and specifically the ones in official “consortiums” that allow course-sharing, have shuttle buses, and so on.
It turns out he currently isn’t interested in California schools, so for now the Claremont Colleges are out. But the “Quaker Consortium” in the Philly area and the “Five Colleges Consortium” in Western MA are both live options.
Relevant to this thread, the Five Colleges include Amherst, and also Smith, Mount Holyoke, Hampshire, and UMass-Amherst (to me it is an attraction to have a full university in the mix, and Hampshire is an interesting alternative-format college that was actually created by the others). So not that everyone should value this, but that is one distinguishing feature of Amherst, and that is also a list of non-NESCAC LACs that I would think some might want to consider.