USC – a very relaxed, California vibe, but the kids work hard. Also gives amazing merit aid to top kids. UCLA as well has a good relaxed vibe, but top students.
USC Gives out about 100 full tuition scholarships per year, my son got one. They also have 1/2 and 1/4 scholarships and many others as well. December 1 deadline to apply. Great school, lots of flexibility and happy students!
CS is included in ‘STEM’.
I’m rereading your original post. Are you sure HE wants a more relaxed atmosphere? One of mine was just itching for the smartest people she could find, and she didn’t care how hard she had to work. Now — I agree that she did really like a cooperative atmosphere, too. But steer as you may, sometimes they have their own opinions. 
Without reading the whole thread, I’d suggest:
Rice
Brown
U. Rochester
Harvey Mudd
Olin
If you’re also considering LACs with no engineering:
Williams
Amherst
Carleton
Grinnell
St. Olaf
Top Engineering + Relaxed fun environment= The University of Southern California (Viterbi).
What you really want is the most collaborative environment.
Brown. You need to get your wife to move on From her Irrational reason for disliking Brown.
Agree naviance scattergrams were way off this year. And they don’t reflect volume of applications. For example, one college had 20 applications from our HS in 2017, and 40 in 2018.
Point taken about Brown. Like I said, that will be a project. Fortunately, there is plenty of time, and it’s an easy visit.
Yes, but what is applicable to CS is not necessarily applicable to “STEM” overall, and what is applicable to other majors within “STEM” is not necessarily applicable to CS.
Also, I just made reservations to visit Mudd, USC, and UCLA as a side trip from his upcoming summer camp drop off. Thanks for those suggestions.
See if he can set up a time to do an interview with someone from admissions while on the USC campus.
And be sure to walk around incredible new village housing complex!
have fun!!
@hebegebe, A collaborative, non-competitive atmosphere is difficult to quantify. At all academically rigorous schools you will find intensely driven students who generate a good deal of INTERNAL pressure to excel. I don’t think there’s anyway to slow them down, but they can be diverted. To me, it’s helpful to look at what students do when they’re not in class or working on academic assignments, what activities they pursue to blow off steam: In other words, the school’s pervasive culture and personality which can be quite distinctive at small LACs.
Overall none of the most selective schools offers an atmosphere that is academically relaxed: Cooperative, maybe, laid-back, maybe not. A common metaphor is the duck appearing to effortlessly skim across the water’s surface while furiously paddling underneath. You get a lot of furious paddlers at academically rigorous schools, but some schools keep the pressure in perspective while others seem to magnify the angst.
Williams, which is the school I’m most familiar with, has a long time reputation for encouraging participation in sports and outdoorsy activities as well as participation in arts related activities. My observation is that many Williams kids are equally focused on their academics, sports/outdoors stuff and the arts, and that maintaining this trifecta goes a long way in defusing grade pressure, diverting competitiveness and encouraging collaboration.
You will find that many other LACs emphasize this kind of life balance – Pomona, Bowdoin, Hamilton, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Kenyon, Carleton, Davidson come to mind, but of course there are others, with different cultures and personalities. Some encourage a greater involvement in social consciousness, some are just blatantly social. Overall, LACs’ small classes and nurturing and accessible professors can be instrumental in shifting the focus from competition to collaboration and the goal from perfection to balance.
Ultimately, your son may decide that engineering and a larger student population are must-haves which would preclude most LACs. I’d suggest you start with visits to Pomona and one of the New England schools like Williams to see how the general LAC concept is received.
On the west coast, I immediately thought of Whitman and the Claremont Schools. Although, Whitman may be too small for him. I don’t know much about the vibe at Occidental but that might be an option as well.
Occidental has a really good 3-2 engineering program with CalTech.
I would ask about the percentage of kids who start with the intent of 3-2 ever make it to Caltech. They say that only ~15% make it to Columbia or Caltech, and you have to be exceptional before they even let you apply to Caltech. I would guess it is well less than 5% that make it to Caltech.
Thanks everyone for the comments. The main takeaways from this thread are the potential LACs that I knew little about, and to re-evaluate perceptions about Johns Hopkins and Brown.