Strong student looking for colleges that are strong in data science (either a DS major or sufficient course offerings through math/CS).
Another requirement is that there is a critical mass of outdoorsy students and access to hiking, skiing.
Bonus points if it is a small college.
Middlebury, Bowdoin, Colorado College, Dartmouth come to mind but not sure about the data science strength. Other suggestions?
Perhaps Williams College and/or Amherst College?
Agree with Williams and Amherst and would probably add Carleton.
For some less reachy schools, you might want to consider Clarkson, Norwich, Roanoke, and Willamette.
UVM - small flagship 
Montana Tech
TN Tech
I think you can find data science without the data science major at a lot of schools.
Good luck.
I would agree with the addition of Williams to your list. Williams definitely has a critical mass of students involved in outdoorsy activities including skiing and snowboarding plus skating, hiking, climbing, biking, rafting. The campus’s location in the Berkshire mountains means the outdoors is instantly accessible.
Williams’ Outing Club is one of the oldest and largest among LACs. Jiminy Peak, 25 minutes away, is Williams defacto ski/snowboard go-to location, and the Outing Club also sponsors trips throughout the area. Winter Study (or January term) is a great time for snow sports of all kinds.
Williams math & statistics department is highly respected, and I understand that its CS program is solidly placed among its LAC peers. Not my area of expertise, though.
How strong is strong (student).
Hamilton College (small LAC in Clinton, NY) has a newly founded data science concentration/ major.
Hamilton.
Definitely look at Colby. Hits all your marks.
Data Science isn’t what it used to be. It’s now really all about machine learning, or at least the application of machine learning. There’re plenty of colleges, particularly among LACs, that can provide their students access to outdoorsy activities. Your challenge will be to find ones among them that can provide you with sufficient depth in machine learning, whether they offer a DS major or not.
Colorado School of Mines. People overlook this school but is a super strong STEM school (including CS), not too difficult admissions, and is against the Rocky Mountains! It isn’t small, but it isn’t huge (6000 kids I think?). They are also pretty generous with merit.
There CS major has a DS focus option
This school is typically rated in the top 10 on ROI, if not the highest ROI of any school.
https://davisinstituteai.colby.edu/
This is what made me think of Colby…
Virginia Tech!
To answer the question above, grades and test scores likely to be tippy top. Extracurriculars merely solid.
and we see kids like this getting WL at schools like Loyola Marymount.
This is always my fear - most schools mentioned are highly rejective.
I think most schools today can find a data science like major - may not be called data science.
Even the best of the best get shut out from these type schools. And when one mentions outdoors - it can simply be access to I want to cycle all the time - and Ft. Lewis College would work, for example - and no that’s not a pedigree school.
But it can be a W&L or not, a Sewanee - there’s so many that would work that are great names (or not) - but maybe not the most highly rejective.
It would help if you could provide more context - ie GPA, rigor level, test scores - vs. saying very high. Very high means different things to different people.
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