<p>“Part of what I’m looking for in a school is a student body that will have both types of people.”</p>
<p>You will find equally smart students who enjoy BOTH learning for the sake of learning AND chilling with fellow students at Chicago, Reed or Brown, trust me.
At Colorado, or any lower ranked, less highly academic LAC, you will be hard pressed to find enough of the former to keep you intellectually stimulated over 4 years. And you will find that will be VERY important over the next 4 years.</p>
<p>DS was accepted at many top U’s [Chicago, Brown, Wash U, ]and LAC’s [Pomona], but choose to go to his “safety” U, for a number of good reasons- a full tuition scholarship, a very strong program in the field he was very interested in, and he knew he would be applying to grad schools in the future. That said, he did have a HARD time over the first 2 years finding his intellectual peers, and this was at a U with 12,000 UGs. </p>
<p>He is now finally really happy at a top academic institution for his Phd [CalTech] , and has quickly found his intellectual peers are all normal, smart, nice kids who are fun to hang out with too.!</p>
<p>Given the type of student you are and your intellectual chops/ abilities, I think your parents may be correct in thinking CC is not worth the plane trip. </p>
<p>For the 2011 accepted class, U Chicago has the highest # of National Merit Finalists 's of any college or university, even Harvard [ 261 vrs 259 for H]
The U my son went to has the 3rd highest # of NMF’s- 250
Brown has 78
CC has 11.
that should really tell you something…</p>