They are sick of individualized attention and small homogenous populations this is exactly how duke and dartmouth fell behind cornell in the last two weeks of her decision-making process for ED. she felt cornell was much more diverse. My oldest son chose u mich over oberlin for the same reason but didn't find as much diversity as he'd hoped.
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My kids were used to 7-13 in a class in HS so 30 seems big. I would fear your kids might regret the big lecture hall learning experience. I don’t see much to recommend it or what the advantages would honestly be. Doesn’t seem like a lot of bang for the educational buck to have an impersonal learning experience.
If students want a large lecture hall experience, they’ll find one on any campus - even small LACs have a class with 50 or 60 students and all colleges have a lecture hall with at least 100 seats, if only for a conference or a colloquium.
“even small LACs have a class with 50 or 60 students”
Not all but yes many do.
Note that all colleges have a lecture hall so that, if one were to wish for a lecture hall experience, it’d be available. For some majors (especially humanities/social sciences where the process of writing and rewriting is crucial) small classes really are a must - learning in a primary-source/discussion based class is completely different from textbook/lecture.
As for diversity, it really depends. For example, a public university will have more socio-economic diversity but less geographical diversity.
Opposite case at University of MIchigan. Much more geographic diversity than socioeconomic or ethnic/racial diversity. The OOS/in-state ration is just a smidge off of 50/50. To the naked eye, it is stunningly un-diverse, whereas at other campuses the diversity was quite noticeable.
Yes. And at University of Wisconsin too. There are others like this too. The out-of-staters (or at least those from the NY metro area) all live in the private dorm (nicer, more expensive). It’s a real shame, and I am surprised that the universities foster this separation.
What happened to the OP??
“sitting in a non discussion class (whether of 30 or 300) was never how I absorbed material.”
I’d argue any class of 30 should be discussion based a good portion of the time, regardless of the subject matter. But even if the class is a lecture, 30 is more conducive to learning - easier to ask questions, less noise, easier to hear & see, less easy to hide. 
@doschicos Totally agree with you.
But the downside of small classes, is there is no slacking off on homework! Gotta have the reading done for every single class and be prepared to discuss it!
Yes, @wisteria100, THAT is another thing this parent likes. If I’m shelling out major $$$ for my kids’ educations, the school better deliver and my kids better deliver as well! 
My oldest S, to his credit, ruled out mcgill and rochester after sitting in on a couple of lectures: Zero teacher-class interaction, no discussion groups. So he ended up at u mich but in the residential college, which is a small liberal arts college within the broader university. Still, he’s disappointed with the racial, geographic and socio-economic diversity. He feels like most of the mich kids are from white, well-to-do, suburban communities. In the end, he transferred out of the rc into UM’s pub policy school.
My daughter attends a school that is very diverse in many ways - race, religion, geographic, economic. It is 35% international, and there is an international festival every year. It is about 30% instate students, and the rest of the domestic students are from 40 or so states, but mostly the east coast (lots from NJ). The school offers a lot of FA so the SES is mixed.
It is not one big melting pot, and students tend to group with their ‘own kind.’ Clubs seem to be very diverse, even social Greek groups, but when you see groups of students gathering in the cafeteria, in housing, at sporting events, it is still the white kids, the kids from Sweden, the black kids together. My daughter is Chinese but doesn’t socialize with other Chinese students because they don’t speak a lot of English. She just hangs with her team, who happen to all be white (she’s the only minority).
@Endora I’m all for learning and less about busy work. My preference for my own kids is less grade focused and more active and participatory learning. I’d argue that it might have less to do with class size and more to do with the type of academic institution your child chooses. Some schools are more high stress/high workload than others regardless of size. If a preference for large classes means not having to prepare for class or be worried about attendance and only worrying about grades on a midterm and a final, I’m not sure I personally get the value of spending money on that kind of education.
My kids get themselves to class and they are prepared. They didn’t miss classes in grade school, high school, and now college. Really, in 13 years of school, I’d be surprised if my kids missed more than 10 days each. Doesn’t matter if the class has 200 in it (few do) or 20 (many do) they go to class. Class size wasn’t something I worried about at all when selecting a college.
I didn’t dislike small classes because I couldn’t hide, but I did dislike a few because there was someone who just couldn’t shut up. I had a few courses that were just too small and I didn’t think the discussions were valuable because it was just one or two people giving an opinion - over and over and over.
That’s a valid gripe, @twoinanddone. It’s too bad the prof/teacher didn’t find a way to manage that. Handled properly, a handful of students shouldn’t be allowed to dominate discussions regardless of class size. I do think teaching different sized classes takes different skill sets - managing discussions so different voices are heard, delivering lectures in an engaging and dynamic way. I’ve witnessed successful and unsuccessful examples of both.
Small class vs large is totally a personal preference. That is why it is a must to visit the school and inquire about the classrooms. If a student says they have never seen a lecture hall and the admin people say they do not have any, then you got your answer. If they say we have a few, but most classes are held in small classrooms and you ask what a few is and they say “under 50”! Then you pretty much get the gist.
My personal opinion is that smaller classes are better. My experience with lecture halls was the prof said his lecture, and then you went to a breakout session with a grad student. He/she was there to help you. My problem was the inability to ask a question. In a break out you are asking someone to answer for someone else. “What did the prof mean when he said XXX?”. Hmmm. I think he might meant YYY… But who knows if it is right?
Maryland does not give substantial merit, but they give some. My daughter had a higher gpa and test scores and received a total of $10,500. $8500 was from the school and $2000 was from a scholarship within her major.
I believe Lehigh meets need now. She has a shot at UNC however OOS acceptance rate is 18%.
My daughter received merit at Maryland. I will send you a PM.
Largely HIPPO, so apologies if I’m repeating any advice:
If D is being too picky, I agree with some others that you should put the ball in her court in terms of finding some more schools to look at. I loved the Princeton Review’s 33x Best Colleges as a starting point- must’ve read the whole thing. She can easily flip through it and find a bunch she may not have been considering or known. Use test score ranges as her metric of “is this a match” and from there, can whittle down geographically, Jewish %, making sure they have her major, etc.
Also on the note of what some have said, she really should pay no attention to what her high school peers may think. It is one of the most silly things to base this decision on. If the best fit happens to be a prestigious school of course go nuts, but so long as it’s not drastically below her level it shouldn’t matter much. She won’t have “worked hard for nothing”-- she’ll be ahead in classes, have a better class registration time, possibly get Honors program perks, scholarships, possibly have an easier time getting better grades and can be really involved in EC’s… there are a lot.