“As a grad student I taught at a big research institution, Stanford, and there are very smart students there as well, but they weren’t the ideal I had in mind, which was the engaged, enthusiastic liberal arts student who’s in it for the ideas, for the love of knowledge …”
The OP does not want to major in a foreign language. She wants to do cross-disciplinary work with CS, psychology and HCI and guess what for that, Stanford is one of the best, which is why it’s her first choice. And it’s her dream school, if a kid is a CS major and her dream school is Stanford, no one is going to convince a teenager otherwise. Also if the OP wanted to minor in Russian, they have a pretty good program, the Ambassador to Russia during the Obama admin teaches a couple of undergrad classes there. I’m not sure what the Hamilton prof gains by denigrating a place like Stanford, but whatever.
OP, I’d SCEA to Stanford, RD to Pomona, Cal Tech and Harvey Mudd, then fill out the rest of the list with matches and safeties. If you’re in CA, one of the UCs, Cal Poly SLO would be good safeties. Michigan could be a good match OOS, as Publisher suggested. Rice also fits a lot of your requirement but it’s another reach.