<p>If you think you’ll like Operations Research (what’s this bio-math thing anyway :-)) Purdue University could be another option. Nationally ranked engineering program (even after they let me graduate, sigh :)) and very strong choice of related courses from Math, Statistics, Management, and Industrial Engineering (which is the primary OR focus, look at <a href=“https://engineering.purdue.edu/IE/Research/OR[/url]”>Research Areas - School of Industrial Engineering - Purdue University; for details, ranked up to #6 depending on who does the books, and so on). </p>
<p>Unfortunately, Purdue being a huge flagship state university in the middle of nowhere… social life tends to be a bit, ehem, you get the idea :). But the nerd-ness I encountered in my years there was more ‘down to earth’ nerd-ness rather than the haute coiffure nerd-ness of Harvey Mudd, MIT, Cornell, and the like. </p>
<p>Another awesome and relatively straightforward to get in and high quality school located in the slightly better middle of nowhere would be Univ of Wisconsin-Madison - awesome Math & Statistics department, good engineering, etc. </p>
<p>As for ‘nerds in large flagship university’ land, my own daughter (art/architecture nerd) is attending such a school… Sure, they’re a minority of a few hundred kids in a land of tens of thousands, but they live in their own world, and that’s all that matters to them. </p>
<p>Try to redefine your own nerd quotient and see what comes out - the advantage of huge schools with good engineering/math type programs versus smaller ‘everyone is a nerd’ schools is money available for the nerds :).</p>