@ACollegeFan - I can’t offer much advice on the East Coast vs. West Coast question, as we’re a CA family who didn’t look closely at the VA public U’s. But I can say that between Scripps and Chapman/LMU, I would 100% go for the Scripps core with the 5C’s CS programs.
My D is also interested in CS, and has narrowed her decision down to Scripps vs. Northeastern. She is likely to prefer an interdisciplinary program to a straight-CS degree; her most likely majors would be CogSci (through Pomona - there is a computational track with a lot of CS) at Scripps, or one of the CS+X combined majors at Northeastern (where “X” would be psych, linguistics, or design). But both schools offer a good amount of flexibility, which has been a selling point on both counts.
Obviously Scripps and Northeastern are very different schools, so it’s kind of odd to have it come down to these as the final two, but here we are! D is doing an overnight at Scripps next week; hopefully we’ll have more clarity after that. Please share anything you learn about the Claremonts and accessing CS programs as a Scripps student!