Choosing a school thats perfect fit or one that felt like home?

I have received all my acceptances and now need to make a decision. For private reasons, I won’t name the school but they are both top 50 universities that cost nearly the same. I have visited both but will be at one of them again soon before i make the final decision. The issue is, One of the schools is everything I want. Perfect major, perfect loaction, great school spirit, well known and everything. If i made a list of everything i want in a school this would match perfectly. I know i would be happy there, but I didnt have this amazing and homey feeling when i am on campus. My other school is inconvienient to get to, isnt in a preferable location, and doesnt have the best major for me. I am pre med so major doesnt mean that much but the one school made me so excited to study said major. However, the school that isnt a perfect fit felt right. I was so excited when i got my acceptance, I am still happy to have the opportunity to attend, and I like the school a lot. I keep going back to the other school and seeing myself being happy closer to home and studying something i genuinely enjoy. Just curious what your opinions are on choosing felling vs fit.

Well, on the one hand it can be really hard to judge the atmosphere of a college when you only visit for one day. It could just be the wrong day. Maybe it was rainy; maybe you got the lazy tour guide that day; maybe something interesting was happening off campus. It works in the opposite way, too, especially if you went on an organized visit day: colleges are very good at making students feel at home. I’m not saying you should ignore your gut feeling at all - quite the contrary, consider it strongly - but do keep it in perspective.

Why do you think you didn’t get that “amazing feeling” at the school you though would be a perfect fit for you? Examine your gut.

The other thing is that you were experiencing it as a prospective and not a student. Things will be different when you are there day in and day out - that’s when things like the location come into play. If you know that you’re a city kid who lives to visit the theater and museums on the weekends, and you feel really at home in a college in a small college town - you have to decide whether the “homey” feeling is enough to make up for the fact that you probably won’t be hitting up a big art museum every weekend. If you love hiking mountains in your spare time and the college you feel at home nearby is nowhere near good hiking, you have to decide whether hiking is really important enough to your well-being to disrupt that homey feeling on a regular basis.

That said, do note that many students get attached to the fantasy of a location (very often, New York) rather than the reality of that location.

Same thing with everything else. Is being close to home important to you, and realistically, how often do you think you’ll go home once you are in college? (It’s hard to predict the future, but try.)

@juillet thank you for that. I have visited them both for atleast 6 days each so u have done more than just a quick visit. I can’t pinpoint what the homey feeling is so it’s hard for me to know why I don’t have it at the other school. I feel comfortable and like I fit in at both, the other just feels more special and I don’t know if that feeling is worth passing up a perfect fit.

Remember that there’s no one school that can possibly tick all of your boxes for all four years.
No school is perfect, even if it seems so from your visits. Juliet is correct when mentioning that visiting as opposed to living at a school, might be two different experiences.

My question to you would be, if school # 1 seems so perfect on paper, maybe you want to stretch yourself and attend a school that challenges your comfortable feelings of ‘home’. Are you actually looking for feelings of ‘home’ for the next four years, or are you looking to challenge yourself by living and attending a school that presents a different outlook?

Conversely, perhaps you’ve already answered your own question when you say school #2 'just ‘felt right’.

Either way, I say use your time prior to May 1 to do a bit more digging into how the current students at the two schools perceive their academic and social lives. Maybe another visit to each with the express purpose of hanging out and assessing the type of students who will be your peers.

@hop thank you. The school that is closer to home is still three hours away. Both are very large and will still be challenging my comfort. I only say honey feeling because that’s what every college and your guide says they feel when on their campus. To me school #2 just has this extra feeling that is pushing me towards it, but it’s definitely not the feeling I get when I am in my literal home. I have been looking at both of these schools for two years and talked to many students so I have already done a lot of research. Thank you though I will definitely take everything into consideration

I would go with the school that you feel the ‘fit’. Sometimes a good fit on paper doesn’t translate to fitting in and really loving a school. You are going to be actually living there, not just researching it, so choose the one where you feel the best vibe. It seems like you have done a lot of due diligence, so don’t be afraid of your gut feeling