<p>S attended large bustling HS with almost 2000 students. Checked out quite a few small LACs and really liked them at first. Then visited much larger campuses like PSU, UNC, UVA and Cornell and fell in love with the big bustling college town atmosphere. He also love sports so D1 programs were a big plus. He was concerned about huge classes and impersonal feel - but he was accepted into an excellent honors college program (only 300 incoming students in this program). They live together and have a "school within a school" concept plus smaller classes so he feels he's getting the best of both worlds. He's starting this fall so we'll see. I really think this preference depends on the kid, not the high school.</p>
<p>S went to a large HS. He wanted a college with some smaller class sizes, but wanted to school to be in an urban, culturally rich area. He immediately nixed anything rural, regardless of size. (With the exception of Schreyer Honors College, he felt that PSU was just too big with too many distractions. This doesn't surprise me, as he never attended a football game, homecoming activity or dance at any time during HS!) In summary, the city/town was at least as imortant as the school itself.</p>
<p>Well, my D's hs graduating class was around 750 but in terms of her intellectual and social peers, the number was closer to 150, if that. Put in those terms, it made the idea of an LAC theoretically more acceptable when she started visiting. Of the school where she is, she has said something more along the lines of "Not everyone is going to be my friend but I respect the intellectual capabilities of more than 90 percent of the students I'm in class with."</p>