<p>"Quality of education" for Chicago extends just beyond individual subject areas-- one has to do an entire core curriculum.</p>
<p>You can get a fine education at all the schools you list, and if you work hard in school, no matter what school you attend, you'll have many opportunities available to you after graduation. Some questions to consider:</p>
<p>1) Who are you? What are you like? What do you like to do on weekends? What do you consider fun?</p>
<p>2) How determined are you to major in econ or CS? Do you want econ/CS to be among the schools more popular or less popular majors?</p>
<p>3) What do you think about cold weather? Warm weather? Cities? Cornfields?</p>
<p>4) Would you be interested in engineering as well? Some of the schools on your list have small/nonexistent engineering programs, others have large/prominent ones.</p>
<p>5) Dorm life? Food? Meal plan options or lack thereof? More important than you think-- you have to live with it every day.</p>
<p>
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Actually, if I go to an LAC, I might just end up doing an Economics-Computer Science double major .. so ...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>While Harvey Mudd probably has the best CS out of your list, it does not offer Economics as a major. You would have to off campus major at CMC or Pomona to get the Economics degree. </p>
<p>HMC's international admissions are extremely selective. Unless you are from some underrepresented country in the world (basically not from an Asian country), you stand little chance.</p>
<p>1) Who are you? What are you like? What do you like to do on weekends? What do you consider fun? - Umm, hang out with friends, go out for movies etc etc.</p>
<p>2) How determined are you to major in econ or CS? Do you want econ/CS to be among the schools more popular or less popular majors? I want atleast one of them to be amongst the schools popular majors...</p>
<p>3) What do you think about cold weather? Warm weather? Cities? Cornfields? Fine with all ...</p>
<p>4) Would you be interested in engineering as well? Some of the schools on your list have small/nonexistent engineering programs, others have large/prominent ones. If the school has an engineering program, I MIGHT opt for Computer Engineering in place of Comp Science.</p>
<p>5) Dorm life? Food? Meal plan options or lack thereof? More important than you think-- you have to live with it every day. - No idea.</p>
<p>It sounds like having the engineering option is important, at least as of now. I don't have the time to whittle down all the schools that don't engineering.</p>
<p>Econ is probably a popular major everywhere, computer science less so.</p>
<p>When I asked about weekend fun, I was really hinting at party scene. Some schools have a bigger, more unified, more prevalent party scene, some schools have reputations for particularly heavy drinking, some schools have a lower profile social scene, some social scenes are particularly Greek. If you're in a cornfield, the tendency is going to be towards alcohol, and if you're in a city, the tendency is going to be towards concerts, restaurants, bars, museums, etc. While you could fit in with any of them, you might as well take a preference.</p>
<p>I prefer a school where a lot of students chose to stay in housing and don't move off campus. Some schools will politely kick you off of campus after first or second year. I didn't care particularly about the quality of the dorms, but I cared that I could have a single my first year and that I didn't have to live in a high-rise apartment/dorm-- I wanted a dorm dorm. Again, you have so many schools on your list that you might as well cut down schools that don't have what you want in terms of housing.</p>
<p>Given the three aspects that you care about, I'd strongly recommend Ohio Wesleyan University for CS:
(1) This is primarily related to (2), so I will let you take a look at the site
(2) Its graduate placements in CS PhD program are excellent <a href="http://math.owu.edu/alumni.html%5B/url%5D">http://math.owu.edu/alumni.html</a>
(3) A lot of aid for international students.</p>
<p>Pomona and Mudd are part of the same consortium (literally a 10 minute walk from each other) and very hard to directly compare. In terms of selectivity they are virtually the same: the most selective LACs in the country. Many would say that they are both top 5 LACs in the country with AWS. The student quality is basically the same too.</p>