Swarthmore ran into capacity limitations for its CS department, so it has instituted CS course rationing for CS majors: The CS Major Course Cap :: Computer Science :: Swarthmore College . Basically, CS majors are limited to 9 CS courses (3 introductory courses and 6 upper level courses) before being deprioritized for enrollment in further CS courses.
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@Search2022 Luck of the draw sounds appealing, but that might mean a LOT of extra essays, and that might mean he doesn’t pay as much attention to any one in particular, which could be detrimental.
But…to add to your list…Oberlin is a top-notch LAC and I have heard it has a great CS department. A son of a friend went there and loved it, and has a great job now.
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I was thinking Swarthmore too (it is apparently the only LAC that grants its own engineering degree) but they are reputed to be EXTREMELY intense – and I thought that was what your son specifically didn’t want.
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Of course you would think of Wesleyan above Amherst & Williams. You are fiercely loyal! 
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My bad. WAW just trips off the tongue when you’re in Middletown, I suppose. 
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I get why OP created a new thread, but if this is for the same kid as on the other thread, I would not think that Swarthmore (for example) is the vibe he is looking for. It’s an intense place, and even the very mathy/CS kids there LOVE a good discussion about the meaning of life (using that as a metaphor for the life of the mind). Kids don’t go to Swarthmore to major in math or CS to get out of taking a lot of humanities classes- they do it precisely because they WANT to take those discussion based, literature/writing intensive classes in addition to math and CS.
OP- we’re talking about the same kid as the other thread, right???
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I agree. And, TBH, I hadn’t realized the similarity in the two threads when I made my initial reply. If I were to edit that list, I probably would not include Swarthmore.
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Swarthmore has, proportionally, more STEM students than any other LAC (except HMC). Since many STEM students gravitate toward CS these days (true on any campus), Swarthmore has more CS capacity issues than most other LACs.
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@mmrose Bingo! Thank you for remembering…trying to avoid the intense/competitive schools 
and LOADS of essays. As someone suggested, I now have a nice spreadsheet of overlapping supplemental essays. Will look into Oberlin!
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@blossom Hi, thanks for clarifying! YES same kid, same concerns, slightly different focus Since we are early in the college exploration process, his list entails a couple LACs, some techy schools, and some flagships. He is not looking for an intense academic environment and certainly is not seeking discussion based classes. He may be interested in engineering, but we won’t have a final answer on that until he has some Calc/Physics C under his belt Q1 next year. If he ends up NOT wanting engineering, there’s a fairly good chance he will want to pursue computer science. I’m looking for insights as to which LACs might have solid computer science programs (if he does not head towards a more techy school or larger university).
@circuitrider Sorry, I’m new here! Maybe there was a way to link the threads? I still welcome your thoughts beyond Swarthmore
I would switch out Swarthmore for Pitzer, the diametric opposite of Swarthmore in terms of intensity. And, as part of the Claremont 5 College Consortium, your son would still have access to a great many STEM courses.
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As an example, If you could determine that, with well-crafted applications, your son would have a 60% chance of acceptance at Grinnell and a 40% chance at Carleton, then his chances of getting into at least one of these schools would be 76%. With carefully selected choices, this approach can enhance the chances of your son attending an academically suitable college (in contrast to one designated a “safety”).
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Only if they are independent events. They are more likely somewhat highly correlated putting the odds closer to 60%.
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This is based on the incorrect assumption that college admission decisions are independent events, when they really are not because different colleges consider many of the same application aspects.
Candidly, after having overlapped with you on this topic before, I don’t think you understand the relationship between probability and real-world events. Beyond that, you ignored a key phrase: “if you could determine that . . . .”
What you call the key phrase does not matter.
If an applicant has a 60% chance of admission to X and a 40% chance of admission to Y, that does not mean that X and Y admission decisions are independent, which is how to get a probability of admission to at least one of 76%.
In an extreme hypothetical, if Y takes X’s admission list and admits 2/3 of X’s admits and no other applicants, then the chance of getting into at least one of X and Y is still 60%.
Yes, it does, since these percentages represent the simplified premise for what followed.
You did not specify independence, which is unlikely to happen in real life between two different colleges’ admission decisions anyway.
Believing that college admission decisions are independent is the reasoning why some students think that applying to larger numbers of super-selective colleges (each with a low chance of admission) results in a high chance of admission to at least one.
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To calculate the probability of admission to either X or Y college, one needs to know not only the probability of admission to X and the probability of admission to Y, but also the correlation of admissions between X and Y. The correlation is usually neither 0 (fully independent) nor 100% (fully correlated). With the two colleges mentioned upthread, the correlation of admissions are likely to be somewhat significant (perhaps with the correlation greater than 50%).
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