<p>Carnegie Mellon (but is in a city), Tufts, Union, Bucknell. My son originally said he didn’t want to be in a city, but made exceptions for Case Western and CMU.
B.U… Northeastern and Drexel are too urban and too big for you? U. Rochester might be too urban but otherwise good. You may find schools that have everything you want but that are between 5 and 10k students so give them fair consideration.
Don’t overgeneralize about the class sizes in a <5,000 school versus a <10,000 school. It varies more with the quality of the school than anything else. You can research each school in depth by looking at the Common Data Set for each one. It gives complete breakdown of % of classes of varying sizes. Intro courses are often the largest almost anywhere you go, but it isn’t a big deal since at any good school there are recitation sections of less than 25 students that meet once a week to review what was discussed in lecture or to answer questions. Professors at any good school are accessible to students. Use the school specific forums on CC to solicit feedback as well.
If you are even considering engineering, then go to a college that has engineering rather than relying on “sister” programs. The exposure you would get in intro engineering courses are critical to help you decide if engineering is for you. You can talk to engineering professors and grad students to help you decide.</p>