I’m a rising senior, and earlier this month, I visited several East Coast colleges (JHU, Harvard, Brown, Yale, Princeton, and MIT), and I’m at a loss for the difference between them. I know people often talk about “fit” in the search for colleges, but the only real judgement I could make about any of these schools was on the quality of their campuses (e.g. I liked JHU, Brown, and Princeton infinitely more than Yale). (I did notice that Brown was more openly liberal than the other schools and that MIT was more openly nerdy than the other schools, but that was about it.)
How am I supposed to determine if I “fit” into a college? I also recently attended a college fair, and I started liking many more schools I had never considered before. They’re all too different for me to truly be in love with them all.
(By the way: I will mostly be applying to top privates, as my in-state publics provide very good backup options.)
I am in the exact same boat, except I haven’t even visited anywhere.
Honestly, at best you get a superficial look that barely even skims the surface of the college’s identity. I guess that general vibe is how you determine its personality. (I’m skeptical: within a college there are inevitably going to be subgroups so that you can almost always find your niche.)
That said, you might just not be picky. Some people are used to hanging out with literally everyone, and so feel comfortable almost anywhere. (And don’t necessarily have a type.)
The elusive perfect fit is far less common than you think. As someone else on this site put it, the best college isn’t perfect, merely a compromise of the qualities you hold most important. (And with so many factors influencing choice, I absolutely agree.)
I hope somebody has good advice on this topic.
I would focus on location fit. When I applied for undergrad, I mainly applied to somewhat urban schools. I thought I would enjoy going to a school within a city environment. Mistake on my part! I realized that city living was sensory overload for me. If I visited those schools earlier, I would have applied to different schools. Luckily, my number one choice accepted me and it was in the mountains/small town. So you should decide what kind of location you want to live in for the next 4-6 years. Honestly? You can’t really know how you will “fit” at a college/university until you actually start going to school there.
I think just by looking at the programs, the location, price, and overall campus will give you an idea. But its just an idea of that school. Maybe if there are any schools close by, go on tours during the school year. That way you can see the student body. Oh and don’t judge a school on protests. Every school has at least one protest every year. At my undergrad it was anti-abortion, christian protesting, and a black lives matter protest.
Seriously? If at this point you don’t understand the difference between the open-curriculum approach at Brown or the drink-from-a-firehose pressure at MIT, to take but one contrasting pair, or the impact of eating clubs on the experience at Princeton to give another differentiator, then I’m not sure what it is you’re considering in a college.
My advice: put the names into a hat, draw one, that’s your top choice.
It would be hard to come up with any definition of “fit” that does not include the following:
a. Is the college affordable?
b. Are the college’s curriculum and academic offerings what you want to study?
c. Is it realistic that you can be admitted to the college (and to your major(s) of interest, if some majors at the college are selective or restricted majors)?
Do you have the grades and scores to get into P, H, Y or S? If so, it really depends on your personality. My choice was Y and that was more about my moral goals and the smaller school factor. No regrets at all. Most money people, if they have the choice will choose H. Entrepreneurial, tech types, usually choose S and P is P, it is so unique that if a visit to P, NJ stokes you then I would go for it.
If you are limiting your search to disparate “top privates” you are nowhere near finding “fit” which should not be blinded by attraction to someone else’s list of brand names. Open up your search and think harder about your criteria.
How can you tell if a college is a good fit? I am reminded of the following passage from “Bluebeard” by Kurt Vonnegut:
*Circe Berman has just asked me how to tell a good painting from a bad one. I said that the best answer I had ever heard to that question, although imperfect, came from a painter named Syd Solomon:
“How can you tell a good painting from a bad one? All you have to do my dear,” he said, “is look at a million paintings, and then you can never be mistaken.”*
Now, I am not saying you need to look at a million colleges, but the principle applies… see or read about as many as you can and you will know after while what is important to you. Seeing a college you don’t like is as important as seeing one you do.
FTR, this goes for lots of things you pick in life.
We’ve been talking about this on the parents thread, and one thing that’s come up is that some kids (and grownups) are very “location sensitive”, and some kids “bloom where they’re planted”.
You may be a “bloom where you’re planted” kind of person where the physical environs don’t matter to you very much-you’re not bummed out by cinderblock dorm walls with a tiny window and stained carpeting. The architecture could not matter less to you, stuff like that.
I think you need to figure out what DOES matter to you, and pinpoint schools that are going to give you that.
The schools definitely have discrete cultures, as other posters have noted. Some people find culture as important as location. Some are completely oblivious to it and just do their own thing with one or two friends.
When you started “liking many more schools” when you went to the college fairs, what was it about them that attracted you? It’s totally ok not to care about the physical plant or the cultural vibe, but you have to know what you do care about.
OP: there are several ways to define a fit, you must ask yourself why are you applying only to “top privates” when you don’t even know what you are looking for? it’s prestigious yes but what is the appeal for you other than a bumper sticker?
Here are a few basic ideas to pick a school:
Do they offer the curriculum and major you are looking for? What is the ranking for that school for that major?
Do you have all the required talents and grades to qualify for that school?
Is it affordable?
Can you see yourself living there for at least 4 years?
Does the student body align with your views? For example, You mentioned that you thought that MIT was openly nerdy :if you like being nerdy great, but if you are looking for a party school then that would be a bad fit. Yes there will be a few who will still party at MIT but that not the majority.
Things to consider are the academic fit, social fit, affordability fit, location fit and personal goals fit.
good luck
There have been posts here on CC over the years such as:
Columbia is a perfect fit but I don’t like the core curriculum.
Boston College is a perfect fit except that it is Catholic.
Northeastern is a perfect fit but I don’t want to do coop.
If the defining feature of a school is not for you, then it is in no way a “fit”.
Your list is skewed towards elite schools, which pull from the same pull of students, so there may not be drastic differences (I have not visited most of those schools). Visit your state campus backup schools for a contrast. Also visit some non-reachy small schools - you will find that schools that aren’t swimming in prestige and dollars allocate their money strategically and you will see if their priorities match with yours. You may also want a few attainable LACs on your list after comparing a big state campus to the elite schools you’ve visited.
The things you can do to tease out differences between campuses include:
Sitting in on a class
Having lunch with a student
Roaming the halls (tours often just show the outside of buildings). Talk to those you meet. Which buildings are buildings empty or buzzing? Read the bulletin boards (commons-area bulletin boards for student events, academic building bulletin boards for intellectual environment). Take pictures of the bulletin boards and compare campuses side-by-side later.
@prezbucky has a great list of things to pay attention to besides your “gut feel” as well.
My state campus backups are still very good schools, and I wouldn’t be opposed to going to any of them (I live in CA, and will likely get the autoadmit UC thing because I’m in the top portion of my graduating class).
I guess you could say what appealed to me most about schools was how quirky and nerdy their cultures were–I liked Brown and MIT (where I actually lived for several weeks) more than Yale (although I have a feeling that that had to do with how lackluster Yale’s campus seemed). When you say I’m being narrow-minded, it’s because I don’t see the point in paying for a private that is no better than my state schools. I’m open to schools I could potentially get a scholarship at and would be a good fit for me, but I haven’t found any like those yet.
We’ve run NPCs on most of the schools and they’re all around the same price for my family (with the exception of Brown, which I hope had to do with a fluke with their NPC, since I’d really like to apply there), so that’s not a problem.
And yes, I have the stats & extracurriculars to make all these schools possibilities. I’d prefer not to post anything on here for privacy reasons. I plan on majoring in some kind of engineering (not sure which kind yet, but I’m thinking either EECS/ECE or MechE).
I guess I haven’t really pinpointed what I like about certain schools? I don’t know. I liked Princeton even though it’s very different from MIT.
I also can’t say that I like a suburban/rural setting more than an urban setting (or vice versa). I just don’t really like it when a school is too integrated into the city.
Well, you may want to check on the engineering offerings at each school to see if they have what you would be interested in studying, particularly if you want to work as an engineer after graduation (as opposed to working in finance or consulting). Also check the overall curriculum and degree requirements at each school.
Brown does not have open curriculum for ABET-accredited engineering majors, since ABET accreditation requires humanities and social studies breadth requirements. However, these are fewer at Brown than at some other schools like MIT.
UC ELC admission would likely be to Merced if you get shut out of other UCs that you apply to.
If you expect to go into college undecided on your specific major, some of these superselective schools may have the advantage of being easier to change engineering major after enrolling. The more selective UCs can be difficult to change engineering major, since they tend to be enrolled to capacity, though Merced says that changing major is “easy to do”.
