And which did they choose?
And which did they choose 95, 2 , or 55?
He chose the school ranked #2 for ME, but there are several caveats.
First, the number 2 school doesn’t offer PhDs, so it isn’t ranked with the others.
More importantly, he chose the one he did, Cal Poly, because he decided that as an Oregonian, he wanted a sunny area. 
Several higher ranked schools (Case and RPI) didn’t make the final 3.
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There seems to be a dichotomy between relative newcomers to this board looking for recommendations (especially international posters) and longtime veterans, many who have already put children through the system.
The former seem to be heavily preoccupied about rankings. The latter seem to be heavily preoccupied about fit.
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Getting into highly ranked schools is just the beginning… I know a coworker’s brother who dropped out of JHU and a coworker who transferred out of MIT. Fit helps you on finishing up with a degree/diploma. Our close friend’s daughter got into Princeton but it was not affordable and went to state flagship with full ride and on the way to becoming a neurosurgeon. My classmate’s son is at Stanford but she is saying that he is not “fitting” in there!
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For all of the problems with rankings, and there are many, I think they may be better to focus on than the nebulous concept of “fit.” Excluding the tiny fraction of applicants who go to every campus, sit in on classes, eat at every dining hall and visit with every department head, 99.9% of applicants are making judgments on “fit” from random internet postings from people they don’t know. In a macro sense, rankings probably get things close to correct. For most applicants, MIT likely offers a superior education to Boise State. Fit is likely irrelevant because most students would be fine at most schools.
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That’s not the right or full comparison.
Is MIT better than Boise State, if the student and their family have to incur heavy leverage in order for the student to attend MIT, but they don’t if the attend Boise State?
Is MIT better than Harvey Mudd, Cal Poly, Olin, or Rose Hulman, all of which approach undergraduate education differently than MIT?
To the first, I say no, MIT is not the right answer.
To the second, super education is in the eyes of the beholder. An engineering student will get a very good education at all of those institutions, and for the most part, their successes will hang on their work ethic.
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Hey now, my friend is dean of the college of engineering at Boise State and she’s awesome! I’d happily send my kid to study under her 
and he’d also fit better there than MIT.
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MIT is very much a fit school. Some areas (math, for example) are extraordinarily rigorous, and a student not prepared or unhappy to deal with that will be miserable at MIT.
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Budget constraints supercede fit and prestige in importance, so I think that should be set aside.
But every individual is different, so the importance of fit is relative.
Until very recent times, most HS students did not consider fit because they were unable to feasibly visit schools that were far away. In my generation, visiting schools before deciding to attend was not popular. I can’t recall people dropping out of school or even considering dropping out of school because they were unhappy.
There are probably 2 student populations on campus who probably didn’t consider fit (as important as their peers) before selecting schools: international students and low SES students. How much higher are their attrition rates compared to the rest of the student body?
Finally, there is 1 student population that has the greatest opportunity to assess fit before applying because they have the most access to the school, school officials, and current students compared to anyone else- recruited student-athletes. In my experience, there are a lot of unhappy student-athletes on many teams. What they thought they were getting into didn’t correspond to what actually happened once they got there and I’m not referring to playing time. I acknowledge that the campus life of student-athletes is very different than the rest of the student body and there is more subterfuge when it comes to athletic recruiting. However, my point is that no matter what people tell you or how many times you visit, you really don’t know for sure what it’s going to happen until you step on campus.
Most people can adapt to challenging circumstances. For most students at most schools, you can find your “people” and your own niche. Maybe, you could have had a better experience somewhere else. But it’s also possible that the road not taken would have resulted in a less desirable destination.
MIT is an example of a school where fit should be extremely important. Attracted by lofty academic prestige, a lot of students who attend MIT probably didn’t consider fit at all. Despite that fact, MIT maintains one of the highest retention rates (99%) in the country. Maybe, they are very unhappy and are just sucking it up? Or maybe, MIT is really good at choosing students who can handle the workload and the rigor? Either way, their students tend to stay put. They should have transferred out if fit remained a top priority.
One of my kids told me when applying to colleges, “I could go anywhere, it’s only 4 years.” Later on, he said he did appreciate the many school visits; but he still stood by his original statement. Again, everybody is different.
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My kid said something very similar to me, even regarding schools that didn’t “click”. It was something along the lines of “I’m going with what clicks but honestly I’d be happy anywhere, it’s college”.
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