Help me make a list of prospective schools.

I agree with @citymama9 and @insanedreamer that if you want to be around kids that are excited about learning for learning’s sake and faculty that are dedicated to teaching that kind of student, you might want to consider LACs. Swarthmore was an excellent suggestion, as they have one of the strongest CS programs of any LAC, and also have an engineering major, which is rare for a liberal arts college. Carleton is another school I’d recommend that you take a look at and right up there with Swarthmore for top CS department among LACs (CS is one of the two most popular majors at Carleton). Swarthmore and Carleton have 11 and 10 CS faculty, respectively, which are very big departments for schools their size (many LACs only have 2 or 3 CS profs).

I’ll also second Harvey Mudd, which is more pure tech focused, but, as part of the Claremont Consortium, has access to all the fine non-tech offerings at its excellent brethren such as Pomona and Claremont McKenna.

People who’ve read my posts before will know that I’m fond of the princeton review academic and professor quality ratings to get a sense of how seriously students take their studies and the quality of the teaching they receive. Swarthmore, Carleton and HM are all at the very top end of the princeton review scales and FAR ahead of large universities like UCB and UCSD.

These colleges have, to varying degrees, strong CS, broad curricula and intellectual atmospheres: Pomona (with HMC), Grinnell, Swarthmore, Hamilton, Vassar, Williams and Amherst. Specified CS class size limits of from 6-26 can be found within this group.

Be careful about assuming class sizes. Check on line class schedules if that is important to you. The popularity of CS these days means that CS class sizes are likely to be above average compared to the rest of the school.

Some colleges include the maximum class size as part of the catalog course description. The limit may be 26 students even in the case of introductory courses.

Incredible information on the UC programs on this thread, @ucbalumnus.

Look into Carleton, Grinnell, Tufts, HarveyMudd (seconding/thirding!)