Not their choice because of their parents…not because the college has imposed some random restrictions.
You are really stretching to score points here. We can disapprove of the parenting all day long, but that’s got nothing to do with “poor fit”. Parents force their cello loving children into travel soccer, parents encourage eating disorders with their obnoxious weight obsessions, where do you draw the line?
For my daughter it had been:
Parents:
PS (and I realize that’s entirely subjective and likely controversial, but…):
It wasn’t even on the horizon back then - but, today both the parents and student would be guided by “state politics” as the first filter (e.g., perceived lack of inclusivity, criminalization/lack of reproductive choice, suppression of gender expression, book banning,…) - not necessarily because of “first person” needs/affect, but mostly because of hostile environment it implies/fosters, in our family’s opinion.
Only the first time coming out is hard :-). And only because you allowed other people to pressure you into feeling so.
Unless your kids get a free ride, sending them to college is an investment in their future, but not necessarily in monetary terms. You can do your best research comparing outcomes from various colleges in different majors, but those samples are very, very small (in a statistical sense) that the uncertainties may be so large that summary statistical measures may not be very meaningful. Even more importantly, you’re also averaging over very small samples, but do you know enough about those samples to know how your kids compare to each of these samples and their averages?
IMO, financial fit is mostly about affordability, not some quantifiable expected return on investment. Would some colleges be worth some additional amount of investment if it is a better academic fit and are still within the means (perhaps with reasonable sacrifices elsewhere) of a family? Absolutely. But betting a family or a kid’s financial future on assumed monetary rewards that may or may not materialize is surely unwise, to say the least.
I think part of what you are trying to say is that variations amongst the mean outcomes at various colleges are small relative to the variation of outcomes at a college around its own mean.
That is a valid perspective.
But I think there is another framework that also applies. The right tail outcomes at various colleges could be quite different (starting out; not mid or late career) and if I think the kid is likely to end in the right tail, then I may prefer, strongly, one college over another. The right tails are very fat at a small handful of colleges
The right tails may be fatter at some colleges than others but they’re still thin, by definition. There’re obviously many exceptions, but most parents tend to overestimate the chances that their kids will end up in that right tail.
The pressure for and common expectation of upward mobility from where one’s parents are means that kids who grew up in the top 5% money families feel the pressure to attain the right tail, while feeling the implication of being seen as a “failure” if they are downward mobile into the bottom 95%.
I won’t violently disagree with you on this, but growing up, I have seen the right tails
of the distribution in some kinds of academic settings, and I have a good calibration of where someone’s skills and abilities need to be to end up in the tail. I don’t think I am particularly unique in this aspect though, about seeing the tails of the distribution. I can imagine many parents having that sense of whether their kid is in the tail or not. Somewhat objectively, to the extent any parent can be objective about their kid.
This is probably true but IMO, the variation in median outcomes (not mean) is far more actionable than the larger variations on the right tail. No matter how smart or prepared, the outcomes on the right tail are inherently far more unpredictable. As a point of reference, I saw a Citadel post recently where they talked about a 1% selectivity rate to their summer internship program on the back of a 65% increase in interest.
You’re probably one of the many exceptions I mentioned, but it’s hard for me to see how there could be too many parents with the right background and the objectivity to know not only their own kid but also other exceptional kids they never met. Now, if the kid is an IMO gold medalist, or is at the top of her/his class at Exeter, the parents may feel more confident about their judgment.
Those 1% numbers are not meaningful. They are merely self - advertising that they are a desirable employer. Last year Citadel was giving referral bonuses to their current interns to refer future interns. Clearly not a situation where they have a surplus of the right kind of applicants. Many employers in that space don’t advertise in this way.
Those kinds of roles are very crackable, although not trivial.
@neela1 / @1NJparent - so whomever the tail fits best?
(gently trying to reintroduce keywords of the original subject, but sorry if by that I’m stepping on anyone’s tails)
Tail fatness is a fit consideration 
I agree that the Citadel article is obviously self-serving but I do think there are way more people chasing Quant/IM & other right tail jobs than in the past and to some extent the incremental competition may be coming from people who are never really in the running (perhaps like at top colleges where there is a massive surge in app volumes)
Ya some parents are also on the right tail and are better able to gauge the relative position of their kids in the distribution. 
In a typical year about 15-20% of the Princeton CS class goes into quant either on the trading / research side or the swe side. About half the Math dept is going into quant. I can tell you most of these people are not grinding the green book :-). They are just doing whatever coursework they’ve set out to do, and if they choose to apply, they spend 2-3 weeks prepping. And that seems to be enough. The rigor of the coursework, and prior math maturity coming out of high school is what seems to work.
Someone asked my kid about prepping and he said if you spend 15 hours a week upper and lower bounding probabilities for psets in some TCS course every semester, you don’t need any more prep. But these places also hire kids that are strong in geometry, algebra, topology etc . They are just looking for math maturity. Not prep. Of course some risk intuition etc…
Also I don’t want to give the impression that quant jobs are the only right tailed opportunies.
Lots of parents, high school teachers, and counselors may see a student as the being in the right tail relative to the student population of the high school, but that does not mean that the student is in the right tail of the overall national or international student population, or will be enough into the right tail for employment in highly selective jobs that draw national or international applicants. (Of course, highly selective colleges and employers may have some places reserved for hooked applicants, reducing the space available for true right tail applicants.)
While that may true, long-term career success depends on far more than being on the “right tail” intellectually/academically. Those “right tail” students may have an advantage at the outset, but their career trajectory is going to rest on factors that can’t be measured by college performance.
When I was growing up, I had the opportunity to understand what it takes to be in the national tail …
I am happy to take one step at a time. It’s a good habit to impart to the kids