Aw, she sounds amazing! What a fun time and a great way to start her college years!
(Haha yeah no published journal articles here either – glad to hear there’s hope for the rest of our kids 
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Tucson is higher up so it’s cooler than Phoenix. The average highs in June/July are 100 but in the 70s at night. My wife grew up there…says it’s not bad at all.
I don’t know the answer to the other questions but suspect that there’s no issues.
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100 sounds rough, but if that’s summer maybe the rest of the year is ok. It is nice that deserts cool down at night. Thanks! 
At Michigan, you apply to a school, not a major, such as LSA (Literature, Science and Arts), CoE, Kinesiology, Nursing, SMTD (Dance and Theater), Information, Public Policy, Social Work, Education, Architecture, Business (Ross), etc.
If you maintain the proper GPA (it’s not high) and other requirements, switching between schools is reasonably easy, but for the Ross Business School. That’s more difficult. Anyway, students pick their majors at the end of sophomore year. Also, you can get a CS degree in LSA or CoE.
Michigan has a 14:1 student-faculty ratio. Most UC’s are in the 20-25:1 range. I think UCSC is 25:1 and UCLA is 18:1. That measurement mattered to me, but maybe not others.
I’ll also add that D18 is a huge sports fan, especially football, basketball, and hockey (all are very good at UMich with outstanding fan attendance), so that mattered to her a lot, but I’m sure not others. 
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Not an issue at ASU or University of Arizona which have clear admission standards.
See for example CS at ASU ASU CS admission rate - Colleges and Universities A-Z / Arizona State University - College Confidential Forums and UA Bachelor of Science Checksheet(updated 11_25_2020).docx.pdf - Google Drive
At ASU Barrett, all students must take Humanities classes such as the Human Event. See HON 171 and 272: The Human Event | Barrett, The Honors College (asu.edu). It’s part of the curriculum.
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It’s not all about ROI when deciding if a school is “worth it”. I think the OP has the right attitude and has said numerous times they would pay full price if if the school was right for their D.
I had a thread like this for our D and people tried to suggest schools or parts of the country that we had ruled out and those comments weren’t super helpful. This student says no to the South and also says she wants a midsized school with grad students and “energy”. That’s not Williams or Amherst. The list looks good to me as long as she has enough safety options. I don’t know a ton about CA schools but I’m assuming some of those on her list could be safeties.
The list is too long though. One can’t write good apps for that many schools. Both of our kids had essay-heavy applications and applied to a dozen or so schools.They started writing their essays in early July, got most of them done by the end of Sept and still had a hard time finding time to complete the last few since senior year was so busy. I hope the OP’s D has started writing!
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In real life, most of us know kids who wouldn’t consider a big city but who ended up at Fordham and loved it, of the kid who didn’t want to apply anywhere “In the South” who loved Vanderbilt or Georgia Tech. So while it must be frustrating to start a thread looking for suggestions and have posters add schools which don’t fit your criteria- sometimes it helps to have random strangers on the internet challenge your preconceptions and screens.
If the OP is lucky enough to have a guidance counselor who has a wide wide network, knows a ton about colleges outside their own region, and stays up to date on who offers merit and how much- FANTASTIC. But most of us end up with counselors who suggest a short list of 20 colleges- where every other senior is also applying- who don’t know about “off the beaten track” colleges. I literally heard a parent refer to Rice as “off the beaten track” this weekend and fell down laughing. This same parent didn’t know that Northeastern and Northwestern were completely different institutions (and VERY different educationally, culturally, etc) since she assumed that since Southern CT State and Eastern CT State (referred to as "Southern and Eastern) were part of the same system, the “Northern” universities must have the same arrangement.
So Homerdog- bear with us, as we try to expand everyone’s horizons! I’ve suggested colleges to kids (again, in real life) and the knee jerk reaction might be “it’s too big”. I then explain that the med school is on a different campus 30 miles away- OK, so discount the med school. The Ag school is in a completely different region of the state- OK, bye bye Ag. Etc. And by the time you boil it down, the undergrad population of the TOO BIG SCHOOL is only 100 students larger than the “perfect size” school. And since these 100 extra students are likely spread out over 40 different majors- hey, maybe TOO BIG is just right!
Agree about your ROI comment though. Especially since when I add up the number of “I am pre-med” kids I know who never ever apply to med school- it’s a huge number. And if they’d chased the merit and the alleged 4.0 GPA at the ROI option, they’d have discovered that they hate medicine much later in their life!!!
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I never said this was the only, or even primary consideration. Nor did our son choose the cheapest option. Within the financial constraints we set, he picked the one he thought he’d like most…best fit if you will.
That said, when “worth” comes into the conversation, which by definition is monetary value, at least some thought has to be given to that. Otherwise, price would not be part of the discussion.
In order to put value into context, one cannot only consider the price difference, but the opportunity cost of that.
Using two schools currently in the mix, Cal Poly and MIT, for a CA resident there is a $200,000 difference in price assuming the student does not qualify for need based aid. If the family chooses the lesser priced option and invests that difference at historical market returns over the length of the student’s career, assuming retirement at age 62, they would have $3,000,000 after inflation adjustment.
So then the question becomes, what does that three million buy? For most majors, between those schools, it’s not a major difference in salary. According College Scorecard, the only source of non-self reported data that I know of, the difference for Mechanical Engineering, something the OP’s daughter might consider, is about $5k at 2 years out. Financial quantitative analysis is a different story. No school holds a candle to MIT.
That leaves the experience intangibles. Every family has to decide for themselves what those are and what they are “worth.”
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Forgive me as I haven’t read through this whole thread, but if you’re interested in schools in blue states where there is a higher percentage of Asian students, consider Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. My husband (Chinese) and son (biracial) are graduates. Big engineering and computer science, but they also have the school of humanities and social sciences and the Lally School of Business. LGBTQA+ friendly. Good sized Asian student population as well as faculty. @chrisntine
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And they have the coolest performance hall on the planet! 
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Right but is this student a senior? Not a lot of time…
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If WPI is high on your list, RPI is an academic peer schools in many ways. They are also relatively close if you wanted to visit. it’s a little over a two hour drive between schools.
Besides all the schools in the Boston Metro area other suggestions for visiting around trip to WPI could be Umass Amherst which is about half way between RPI and WPI. Umass doesn’t check off as many academic boxes as these two schools but Amherst is a great college town. It also has a consortium of local colleges similar to WPI.
Another school which may not be on your radar but is close to RPI for visiting is Union College in Schenectady N.Y. I call Union the science LAC. For an LAC it has a high percentage of students in Stem majors and also offers an engineering major. To note I would not consider the towns where RPI and Union are located as pluses for choosing either school.
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Haha, my D is not a sports fan at all, but I’d imagine school spirit there would be contagious. It sounds like your D’s having a great time!
Michigan’s system for application and switching majors sounds so much more flexible. The student-faculty ratio does look better than most UC’s, although I understand sometimes schools with lower ratios may still have large intro classes, and schools with higher ratios may have small upper division classes or study groups.
Also, the total undergrad size is like the UC’s – it doesn’t feel too big? Or maybe your D wanted big? We thought SLO’s size or smaller is better for my D, but we’re learning some big schools can feel smaller once students are in their particular program. We do like the idea of the residential colleges they set up at UCSD.
Since you’re from the Bay Area, how bad are the winters in Ann Arbor for your D? I’ve always imagined it was worse than Chicago?
As I’ve read up more, Michigan does look like the best OOS public school fit for my D, but it’s a reach for her so she’d have to take off another reach from her list. Don’t know that she could pull off the Nov. 1 EA deadline either, so she’ll have to decide quickly if that’s something she’d want to try! 
Thanks so much for your help!
That’s great, thank you!
Thank you so much, but I truly don’t mind hearing options outside our parameters. It helps to learn about these other programs and cities that we’d not considered before and it helps open my mind up about other parts of the country too even if she doesn’t apply.
My D is so undecided, LAC and universities both appeal to her, so the discussions here are helping me help her figure out what she really wants. I also learned a lot reading other threads, so hopefully the info here is helping other kids with their searches.
Yes, we have good safeties in the CA schools and are definitely working on cutting the list. Your kids were so on top of their essays! Mine started in the summer and we’d hoped she’d be done with some earlier, but she’s still plugging away at them. Thanks!
Yes, this. I really do appreciate having our perceptions of schools and cities challenged. Thank you and everyone who’s been helping us!
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Yes she’s a senior and you’re so right, not much time! As we’ve gotten any new suggestions, we’ve focused first on checking out those that seemed like they could be a good match and had earlier deadlines. I really don’t want D to add more to her list unless she’s taking some off (and I want her to cut the list anyway). But again we do appreciate learning about schools we hadn’t thought of before that might be a good fit for her, especially in the target/safety group. Thanks again!
Thanks again eyemgh for breaking it down!
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Actually, D is now probably not adding WPI to her list. 
It sounds like a really great school, but she thinks the 7-week sessions would be too fast-paced and stressful having a constant stream of midterms and finals. She was also concerned housing wasn’t guaranteed after the first year. (It’s still high on my list if she changes her mind! ).
Thank you both for the RPI suggestion, it does seem to check off a lot of boxes! I think we looked into it before but thought the city was too cold and remote? Also, I’d read the administration was not very supportive of the students and I wasn’t sure how a new president would change things. The other concern was the Arch program seemed rigid? Not sure how accurate our perceptions of the school and area are.
Thank you!
Most students really like this format. It’s two tech classes and one humanities type course. The environment is very collaborative too, as there isn’t just a senior project with a group, but a major junior project, with the possibility of a freshman project.
As for housing, it’s easy and cheap to find just off campus. Most student move off campus after first year. It’s just part of the school culture.
Also, something that hadn’t been mentioned yet, the study abroad program is unparalleled for engineering students. No school does it remotely as well as WPI does.
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