@Midwestmomofboys I have started looking through the common data set. It is fascinating. 
Obviously, you know your son @bugfree, and it sounds as if an LAC is the right place for him. But when choosing the LAC (which will end up being his choice, but your input will obviously make a difference) l would like to say a gentle word about your son now and your son +3 years from now. Your son is now 15/16, maybe 17? What suits him right now may be different in a few years - probably not dramatically different, but still substantially. Remember to allow for growth - more growth than might seem possible right now! If the college fits exactly right now there is a chance that he will grow out of it before he finishes - this happens at the smaller LACs more often than you might think, though people often don’t recognize that that is what it is. Sometimes the student transfers, other times a year abroad junior year and an underwhelming senior year.
Before I get beaten up by other commenters, let me emphasize that I think LACs are great, I have a daughter who is thriving in her LAC and I know that many, many students love all 4 years at their very small LAC. I am just - gently!- reminding the OP to allow for change and growth in her son. Especially if this is her oldest, she may not have seen how much a kid changes from 18 to 20, never mind from 16-20.
@collegemom3717 Thanks for the suggestion and insight. I think this type of thing is important to consider and I appreciate it being pointed out. In addition to LAC we are considering special tech colleges and smaller state schools.
We homeschool, so I am also one of his teachers and highschool counselor. I am trying to sift through the information and provide my son with the information so he can best make his choices.
you are welcome- and thanks for taking my suggestion as intended.
My daughter’s college beau was homeschooled- when he went off to college the only teacher he had ever had other than his mother was a piano teacher (same teacher from age 8-18), and the only other students were his brother and sister. The college- perhaps a 2-2 1/2 hour drive? - was as far from home as he had ever been. College was quite a change! but he is absolutely thriving.*
If you can, try to take your son to a bunch of different colleges. At first it doesn’t matter if they are ones that are particularly relevant, it just helps to get familiar with them. Like car shopping or house hunting, after a while you realize the things that are similar across all of them, and then you are better able to focus on the differences. All of them will have a ton of clubs and activities and some beautiful bits and to many thousand books in the library. A fun question to ask during the Q&A at info sessions is ‘about how many applications does each admissions person handle’.
He is a really good kid, but it turns out that even really good kids can upset their parents by the choices they make when they go away to college. His mother is a vegetarian, and raised the kids as vegetarians. Guess who has discovered at college that he *loves meat?!
What academic interests does the student have? For various subjects, is he likely to be at normal level, advanced level, or super-advanced level when entering college?
The OP states his child leans towards math and computer science. Do not presume your child will not thrive in a large school/classes environment if the courses are what he enjoys. Be sure that the colleges looked at offer many classes beyond the core in both subjects, as well as grad level courses. Many LACs emphasize the social sciences and humanities but do not have large course offerings in the STEM fields. Honors sequences in math can limit the numbers in a classroom. However, the lecture style format lends itself to presenting the facts and ways to problem solve which can be done for large or small groups. There are always small discussion sessions and labs for students to practice concepts and problem solving. Likewise, there are many smaller classes at large U’s for discussing literature and other fields where discussion is appropriate.
Having many professors in math and computer science departments can offer a wealth of different approaches plus many subfields of expertise. Remember- departments are a subset of larger units. Students are dealing primarily within their smaller field. Will the schools proposed offer the best education in the STEM areas of interest? Ideally you want more courses than you can take in your field available to you. Will the schools have enough courses to last four years? This is where being able to take grad level courses as an undergrad is useful. Plus being exposed to more esoteric subjects there won’t be enough students for (eg 10) in a smaller school.
Your son may surprise you with his ability to do well in a larger institution. He will get to be with students who share his interests in math et al. Much nicer having more than a few students whose other interests may not coincide. I would think he can rise to the challenges because of the benefits of the wealth of interesting classes available to him.
Short answer- look beyond your current criteria. Math/computer science lend themselves to other formats. Your son needs a lot of knowledge and skills before sitting around discussing them. He needs the benefit of many, not just a few, experts in his chosen fields.
Upper division math courses are commonly small even at big universities. But the rapid rise in the popularity of CS means bigger class sizes than before.
I attended a large state flagship university, (Indiana) but I majored in Comparative Literature and ALL of my classes, save two - , a math class for non-majors and an introductory art history course - were less than 25 students, and in a regular classroom, and discussion-based. All of the classes in my major were 15 students or less.
(The math class was in a huge lecture hall and had more than 200 students. The art history course was in a smaller lecture hall and had over 50.)
I also transferred in from a smaller LAC (where ALL of my classes, even science classes and labs, were 20 students or less), so it’s possible that some of the intro gen ed courses at the huge state U were in big lecture halls.
But my point is, if you’re a humanities major, or in a major that’s not very popular, you may end up in very small classes no matter where you go, especially as you get into upper-level classes.
eta: Just saw that OP’s son wants to major in CS. That is a very popular major right now, and bigger schools will most likely have much bigger class sizes, and less individual attention. An LAC will have smaller class sizes (double check that they offer CS, some LACs only offer the traditional Bio/Chem/Physics…)
I started out as a Biology major at an LAC and NONE of my intro classes were in lecture halls, they were all in regular class rooms with no more than 20 students. Labs were small, too.
The other nice thing about LACs is that all classes are taught by professors (although a couple of my TAs at Indiana were better teachers than a few of my professors, honestly; having a TA is not always a bad thing).
What part of the country are you in/do you want son to attend college?
I sent you a PM re: the LAC I attended, University of Evansville, which has Engineering and Computer Science. It is one of those rare LACs that also focuses on STEM. My BIL received his Engineering degree there and my sister received her BA in Math and Education there.
@ucbalumnus
Very cool! My son should have finished at least Calc 3, Diff Equations and Linear Algebra before graduating highschool. So he will likely go right into the upper level math classes.
List of CS course offerings at various smaller colleges:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19190340/#Comment_19190340
With calculus 3, differential equations, and linear algebra completed while in high school, he may want to look for schools with graduate level offerings in math as well as a wider range of upper division math topics. Check course catalogs and faculty rosters. A few (but not that many) LACs, while undergraduate only, do include graduate level math courses in their offerings, since they expect some students to want them. But large math departments at research universities are likely to be easier to find a good selection of upper division and graduate math courses at.
One way to get the best of both worlds is to look for LACs that are part of a larger consortium. The one’s I know best are the Claremont Colleges (they are all adjacent to each other if what is for all practical purposes one big campus), the five colleges consisting of Mt. Holyoke, U Mass, Amherst, Hamshire and Smith; the one that includes Swarthmore, Haverford and Bryn Mawr. RPI has one with a lot of other colleges, but some of those colleges are more than a half hour drive away.
@ucbalumnus THANKS!!! That list is perfect.
@mathmom I have heard such great things about Claremont colleges and the colleges in Amherst.
If you are hoping to use AP or college credits to shave off time from college (only noting that your son has taken very advanced math not often offered at high schools), schools like the Claremont schools and Amherst don’t generally accept those credits, or very few of them. Also, the obvious CS choice of the Claremont colleges is Mudd for a CS major. However, the CS lectures are pretty large for a LAC. Now I will say that my kid is in a sort of dual Physics and CS major there, and while the class size is large for her CS classes, she has not had any trouble getting more individualized help when she has needed it in CS classes (and she did not come in with much CS background). Also, at Mudd your kid would take a math placement test. He may or may not place out of the math he has already taken there – you have to be really top notch in the placement tests to do that given the background of most of the students there. I don’t think the CS class sizes are smaller on the other 5C campuses, either (my kid took one class at Pomona, and I think it was about the same).
I doubt you will find many colleges that are strong in CS with very small CS classes, if that makes sense. The smaller class sizes tend to be more in the humanities side.
I am not clear why you think small classes would be best. My kids both have attended LACs, so I see some of the benefits, but your reasons aren’t too clear to me. Is it because your son tends to “hide out” or fly under the radar in a larger group, and won’t participate? Is it because he LOVES to participate, and thus the smaller group is very much to his liking because he can do so? Is it because you want him to develop closer relationships with his profs? Is it because he has some kind of academic struggle that you worry will go unnoticed and cause him to possibly not do well in college? Just trying to get at your reasons, because that might help us zero in on colleges that are a better fit. Really, most STEM courses are not taught in a seminar style anyway.
Echoing the five college consortium in Amherst MA - they make it easy to take classes at all of the colleges. Most of Hampshire’s classes are all seminar-style so you might check them out.
@intparent Thanks for the feedback, I PMed you.
Adding to intparent’s comments, my D is a CS major (possible math dual major) at Pomona. It is a very popular major right now, and they are actively searching for a new CS professor. So class sizes are not the smallest right now, although I will echo her comments about personal help being easy to obtain (and she went in with ZERO CS experience). There are more CS and math classes available than she can possibly fit in her remaining year there, but she only took one introductory CS class her first year, so your son’s experience would be different.
I’d also check out colleges that consistently place into the “best classroom experience” list on Princeton review. This link, if it works, is a nice compilation for the last five years: http://poetsandquantsforundergrads.com/2014/08/07/universities-with-the-best-classroom-experience/
The Great Books colleges – St. John’s and Shimer in Chicago – use seminars as the only means of instruction.
But unfortunately are not strong in the STEM subjects, which sounds like what this student is interested in.