Another thing you may wish to consider is the affiliation of the Computer Science department.

I did my undergraduate and some of my graduate work at Indiana University, where the CS department was part of the College of Arts and Sciences. For my BA, I had to take a full set of liberal arts courses: literature, music, "soft" sciences (sociology, psychology, etc.). At first I thought "Why do I have to take these silly courses? They have nothing to do with computing." Many years later, I really appreciate what I learned in them. Even for my MS (same department), which concentrated entirely on Computer Science, there was an "air of humanities".

Later I went into the graduate program at UCLA, where CS is part of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. It seemed much more "dry" and uninspiring. I never did finish there, but that's a whole different story.

I have to tell you that I'm describing 20-year-old experiences *cough, wheeze*, so the programs now may be very different. But the point I wanted to make -- which you seem to be thinking about already -- is to look at the program in context. I liked it a whole lot more when the department was in a science and humanities environment than an engineering one.

Larry Wall has a paper on Natural Language Principles in Perl, so make sure you find a school that teaches those principles. ;-)

HTH