<p>No, no, the Smith lightbulb one is all wrong. It’s SUPPOSED to read: </p>
<p>How many Smith students does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Answer: One, but that bulb will never be straight again. </p>
<p>I would add that you would probably need at least one extra student to deliver a lecture on how electricity is just a form of heteronormative patriarchal occidental hegemony.<br>
Oh, how I miss my alma mater.</p>
<p>I agree with fallenchemist. I didn’t understand the concept of a college building a class until I read The Gatekeepers. This book provides the college’s perspective on putting together a class.</p>
<p>momofthreeboys, schools do have personalities, I agree. However, in your example about the school out in the wilderness, the admissions office is not in a position to turn away an urbanite if he expresses interest in the school and is otherwise qualified. The student is applying because he deemed it to be the right fit. Whether or not it actually is, he will find out once he gets there. He also provides diversity, so that’s a bonus. In most cases, the kid will adapt into the environment and experience a personality change, but some will continue to be unhappy, you’re right. If we’re talking about highly selective schools, the dynamics are different because people who truly do want to get in will tailor their app to the school so it seems they are a good fit. For example, if you’re a city person, you wouldn’t necessarily rule Dartmouth out. You might think you’d like the bucolic setting or maybe you like it for other reasons and tell yourself you shouldn’t be out in the city anyway because it’s a distraction, etc. If we’re talking about tippy top schools, if a student gets into one of the HYP and Brown, most will all of a sudden forget “fit” (unless there’s a serious serious mismatch) and be able to rationalize one of the HYP they got into as a good fit.</p>
<p>I agree there’s been a misunderstanding of “fit.” When we talk about “fit,” it should be about whether the student deems he is a fit for a particular school, not whether the school considers him a “fit” for that particular school. The former is about personal fit, the latter is about institutional needs. So that’s what has me confused when people say “oh my child didn’t get in, they must have thought he wasn’t a fit (meaning they though he wasn’t a good personal fit).”</p>
<p>Am I alone in thinking this whole thread is a straw man argument? When was the last time someone on CC said their kid didn’t get in to X school because they weren’t a “fit” for the school and meant by that that they weren’t a good personal fit?</p>
<p>Go and browse these threads. Parents will often say “oh he got rejected, but it’s ok. he wasn’t a good fit there anyway and the adcoms must have seen that.” and by “fit,” they don’t mean he didn’t fit the institutional need but rather he won’t “fit in” at the school, so that’s personal fit.</p>
<p>Yeah, but that is clearly just a rationalization. I doubt most of the people saying that really believe it. And even if there are people naive enough to think that the adcoms can know their kid well enough to have an opinion as to how well they will adjust at the school, that doesn’t mean it makes sense to talk about personal fit working that way.</p>
<p>I would say sometimes a rationalizaton and sometimes not. I remember my kids touring colleges and my instant reaction was that they would never fit in. Get in yes. Fit in no. They know themselves well and generally they came away with the same impression. If you visit, interview and apply you have left an impression on the adcoms also. It’s like interviewing for a job. Companies don’t consider people that aren’t qualified…after that they are looking for who will add to the culture and fit in…stay awhile. The wild cards are the kids that lob an application and all that the adcoms have to go by is what’s in the essay. This is just my opinion but it will be difficult to change my mind.</p>
<p>Conclusion of the thread: There are two kinds of fit. One is personal fit (did you feel you could fit in at the school when you visited?). The other is about fulfilling an institutional need, as ascertained through the admissions process (did the school feel they needed you to be part of their class?). When somebody is looking for colleges he could thrive in, he is talking about PERSONAL FIT. When a college he applied to rejects him ultimately, it’s not necessarily because the college didn’t see him as a personal fit-- it’s more likely that he did not meet an institutional need. Of the 30,000+ apps that colleges are getting these days, you can bet A LOT more than 2,000 kids consider the school a personal fit for them. When a school chooses the select few, they aren’t necessarily concerned with who are the best “personal fits” even among all “personal fits” who had the credentials to get in. They are looking for people they NEED/WANT as an institution, period. For one’s happiness though, one should choose only schools that personally suit them and then let the cards fall where they may.</p>
<p>Interesting…I don’t think a poster can just decide when it is the conclusion of a thread. Sometimes, much to our dismay, they continue on into infamy.</p>
<p>That lightbulb post just might keep it going for awhile!</p>
<p>“They are looking for people they NEED/WANT as an institution, period. For one’s happiness though, one should choose only schools that personally suit them and then let the cards fall where they may.”</p>
<p>That is probably a very accurate perspective.</p>
<p>OP: Sometime on paper a student might find a college as a fit but unless you visit, you can’t determine whether it’s an actual fit. Similarly for a college a student application might seems like a fit on the paper but unless some one personally interview it’s difficult to say if that student is a fit.
So for colleges it’s a difficult task and they don’t care. But for an individual student it really makes a difference so I recommend all my friends to tour colleges to make sure it’s a fit for the student.
On paper DD always thought of Yale as the perfect fit but after touring she saw her fitting into the Cambridge town more than anywhere else. She even liked the Cambridge over Palo Alto which was unbelievable but true.
So a college tour is a must prior to applications itself.</p>
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I don’t find that unbelievable at all. I’ve never liked Palo Alto.</p>
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<p>Excellent ponts, nychomie</p>
<p>
Why so serious?</p>
<p>My conclusion, based on this thread (no underlines or capitals):</p>
<p>Threads which start by questioning terminology used commonly on this site but not in the way commonly used, without making that clear, can cause pages of unnecessary discussion before the point is cleared up and we figure out what was really being discussed.</p>
<p>(Though they may also light up with gems like the most comprehensive lightbulb list I’ve ever seen.)</p>
<p>Well, what had me confused at first was that the parents themselves conflated the two definitions, so when they speak of it when it comes to admissions, it’s unclear which one they are talking about. I suspect they were confused themselves.</p>
<p>I have no problem continuing the discussion on this thread if you so choose. My attempt to put my conclusion in bold was to end it once and for all, and to make clear my main points to those just glancing at the thread and not reading the whole thing. But like I said, we can go ahead and continue the discussion even further.</p>
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<p>It was unbelievable as she has lived all through high school in the bay area and have spent numerous hours in Stanford doing research and other competitions but it was not until the college tours that she flipped over Cambridge.</p>
<p>We did take her to Cambridge to visit Harvard/MIT when she was 4 because we always liked the college town but it was not until her college visits that she changed her mind.</p>
<p>So I would like to stress the importance of college visits before applying so that you can make a more informed decisions.</p>
<p>For DD it changed a lot from applying SCEA to Yale, followed by SCEA to Stanford flipping and applying EA to MIT/Caltech and not applying to Yale at all.</p>
<p>In summary it’s not possible to identify a fit on the paper both for student as well as for college but a student is at greater loss if end up at a college they eventually end up hating.</p>
<p>
<ol>
<li><p>Maybe she didn’t want to go to college too close to home - that can happen.</p></li>
<li><p>Unless she spent a lot of time in Cambridge prior to touring MIT, I’m not sure how you could have expected her to “flip” to a place without ever having really been there.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I too forwarded the light bulb list to my D, a student at Brandeis. She quickly responded that the correct answer to the question “How many Brandeis students does it take to change a light bulb?” should have been, “None - It’s Saturday.”</p>
<p>As far as the Palo Alto vs. Cambridge, often people, especially young people, like the idea of something totally different. She might have flipped over Tulane or WUSTL or Chicago as well, at least as far as the settings. Nothing wrong with that, I think it is a very wonderful part of life at that age if one can afford to do it.</p>
<p>momofthreeboys - I agree that in the relatively limited number of cases where interviews occur, it is very possible that the adcom makes a note indicating they feel that student is a bad fit. In the vast majority of cases, they would only have what they see on paper.</p>
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<p>I am glad your D ended up at her first choice school, and is happy there. But your implication that had she not visited, she would have ended up miserable at Yale is a bit absurd. In all likelihood, she would have been very happy at Yale (and would not have known what she is missing at MIT).</p>
<p>I actually do believe that fit is important. It is especially important at small schools, like Swarthmore, Williams, CalTech, etc - schools with very distinct “culture”, where bad fit can make for a miserable experience at an indisputably excellent institution. </p>
<p>But visiting every campus before applying is a luxury many can not afford. And the impression one gets on a visit may turn out completely wrong, just because of the host they were given, a class they chose to sit in, or a tour guide who made the wrong impression.</p>
<p>And by the way, most Stanford students hate Palo Alto. It is extremely boring, and not at all student-friendly.</p>