Personality type as a factor in college choice?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hey everyone,</p>

<p>Brand new to the forums; apologies if this is the wrong section/has already been discussed.</p>

<p>I'm wondering though about how my personality type may influence whether I enjoy one college more than another. My high school uses Naviance, where I took a personality type test, which gave me the following results:</p>

<p>***Understanding you:
People like you are gentle, caring, and sensitive. To those who don't really know you, you may appear cool and reserved. But inside you feels things very deeply. Your close friends know you are loyal and affectionate, expressive and eager to please. And you are thoughtful, considerate, and supportive of your friends and family. While you love to be included in social activities, you also need time alone to relax or pursue your interests. Because you have such a big heart, you often take even the most constructive criticism personally and may frequently feel disappointed or hurt. You have to force yourself to deal with conflicts head on, and to speak your mind honestly, even when you know it might hurt someone's feelings.</p>

<p>You are also a down to earth and realistic person. You probably have a keen sense of aesthetics and may love a variety of artistic expressions or activities. Since you are so observant, you usually give your full attention to whatever you are doing at the moment, and are often able to tell amazingly accurate stories. You are easy going and playful, but may not be especially adventurous. You struggle to stay organized and may find large or complicated projects are overwhelming and draining. Since you naturally want to follow your curiosity wherever it leads you, you may have trouble making decisions, following through, and finishing all of the projects you start. You hate to disappoint anyone, but are usually quick to forgive others who disappoint you.</p>

<p>Note: Based on our assessment, your personality type is "ISFP."</p>

<p>Your Strengths and Blindspots
Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. The key to finding the best path for all people is by using their natural strengths and becoming aware of their natural blindspots.</p>

<p>***Your strengths may include:</p>

<p>Collecting lots of information.
Developing a good rapport with people.
Being responsive to questions by providing thoughtful, detailed answers.
Being able to make a realistic assessment of the information gathered.
Having a good instinct for what would make you happy.</p>

<p>***Your blindspots may include:</p>

<p>Not being assertive enough at selling your strengths and talents.
Not considering new possibilities you may not have yet thought of.
Not being objective enough; relying too heavily on your immediate feelings and impressions.
Not prioritizing your goals well.
Focusing only on your current needs, and ignoring possible future needs.</p>

<p>***For a career to be satisfying for you, it should:</p>

<p>Be consistent with your strong, inner values and be something you care deeply about.
Involve helping people in real, and practical ways.
Be done in a supportive, friendly, and tension-free environment.
Make good use of your ability and desire to pay attention to facts and details.
Let you work somewhat independently, but also have contact with other people.
Not have too structured an environment, or too many rules and policies.
Allow you to work outside the public spotlight and not require heavy public speaking.
Preferably let you spend time outdoors, and get some physical exercise.</p>

<p>***Your Preferred Learning Style:
While ALL individuals are unique, people of the same type often learn best in similar ways. The following summarizes what you need in order to maximize learning.</p>

<p>A friendly, non-competitive, supportive learning environment.
Being allowed to work alone or in small groups when he prefers.
Demonstration of how the learning relates to something you care deeply about.
Plenty of time to absorb and apply information at your own pace.
Sticking to the practical and realistic, rather than the abstract and theoretical.
Reward for your gentle and cooperative nature.</p>

<p>*<em>With this in mind what would you say about my list of colleges? These are mostly ones recommended by my counselor. In your opinion, are there any I can ELIMINATE from this list? *</em>My first deadline is on Jan. 1, so immediate help is MUCH appreciated.</p>

<p>Bucknell Univ
Clemson Univ
Colgate Univ
Davidson Coll
Dickinson Coll
Elon Univ
Emory Univ
Franklin & Marshall Coll
Gettysburg Coll
High Point Univ
Holy Cross, Coll of
Lafayette Coll
Lehigh Univ
UMD College Park
U of MA Amherst
U of Miami
Muhlenberg Coll
U of North Carolina Chapel Hill
U of Richmond
Rollins Coll
Skidmore Coll
Union Coll
Vanderbilt Univ
U of Vermont
U of Virginia
Wake Forest Univ
Washington & Lee Univ
Coll of William & Mary</p>

<p>Thank you in advance!! I'll be checking back to see what you advise.</p>

2

<p>I did an informal Myers-Briggs Type poll of UChicago last year, and the top results were something like:</p>

<p>25% INTJ
15% INTP
15% ENTJ</p>

<p>12% INFP
10% ENFJ
8% INFJ</p>

<p>6% ENTP</p>

<p>with everything else being pretty much negligible. So a lot of NT’s, some NF’s, and almost no Sensors. Makes sense, given how theoretical/non-applied we are.</p>

3

<p>Thanks for your quick response.</p>

<p>Although UChicago wasn’t on my list, it reminded me that I hadn’t listed my personality ‘code’.</p>

<p>According to Naviance, I have
*Personality Type: ISFP</p>

<p>Can anyone else please weigh-in regarding my personality type and given list of colleges? Any help is crucial at this point; deadlines are approaching FAST</p>

<p>Thanks!!</p>

4

<p>I don’t really buy this. Can you imagine how aweful an entire school of INTJs (or anything else for that matter) would be? These kind of tests are good for showing you what ‘tools’ you lean on, and where your blind spots might be (or what you over- or under-value). They can be useful in helping to create a non-judgemental language for talking with someone who is very different in their style - in ways that either complement or clash with yours. They can give you some clues as to where someone ‘like you’ might want to start looking for certain kinds of work environments, or careers, or partnerships - but telling you what kind of schools you should apply to? Not so much…</p>

5

<p>Thank you, M’s Mom.</p>

<p>That’s good to know. However, it doesn’t exactly help me with narrowing down my overwhelming list of schools too much! haha</p>

<p>Would others agree with this? That these types of test should not be used to select a school? *(keep in mind that there are obviously many other criteria for my final selections of where I apply. I’m just looking to ELIMINATE some schools to make the list smaller) Does this make sense?</p>

<p>Thanks a lot for any and all help</p>

6

<p>There’s a book, Find the Perfect College for You, that actually uses personality type to suggest colleges. I thought it was an interesting spin. It’s available on Amazon.</p>

<p>Davidson, Elon, Rollins, Union and Wake Forrest were among suggested schools for ISFPs</p>

7

<p>Good find, Reeinaz.</p>

<p>I may have that book - I’ll look for it in the morning. Many of the traits described by ISFPs are accurate, but some of them are a little off.</p>

<p>The main one being that I feel as though I’m too practical to be an artist. I find art pretty interesting, along with nature, but I have never pursued it due to my own opinion that I won’t be able to live off an ‘artist’s salary,’ whatever that may be.</p>

<p>I may retake the test…see if I get anything different.<br>
For the record, here are the values for the graph they provided for me with my results.</p>

<p>E: 6 I: 5</p>

<p>N: 3 S: 8</p>

<p>F: 7 T: 4</p>

<p>J: 3 P: 8</p>

8

<p>Want help to narrow down your list? Start with some meaningful selection criteria:</p>

<p>1) size of the school (LAC, large public, mid-sized)
2) location (part of the country, driving distrance from home, urban/suburban/small town, weather or geographic features)
3) culture (jock, intellectual, artsy, hipster, granola, quirky, etc…, liberal/conservative)
4) deal-breakers (single sex? religious? cold?)</p>

<p>Then tell us:
3) what you plan to study/professional goals
4) what you can afford (this one is crucial)
5) grades and test scores
6) hooks like URM, legacy, etc…</p>

<p>Once you know yourself and your optimal learning environment and what you want to achieve, you’ll get lots of suggestions from CC.</p>

9

<p>I think personality inventories would be more useful in choosing a major as oppossed to a specific college.</p>

10

<p>1) size of the school (LAC, large public, mid-sized)
•most likely liberal arts. I’m undecided on my major, but might want to do something ranging from sports medicine to biology, nutrition, design, or advertising
•I would really like to have sports games matter – I wouldn’t play, but it would be fun to go to games where lots of people turn up. (I have D1 football games in mind, which might be more common at larger schools)
•Most importantly, however, I don’t think I’d do well in large lectures. So CLASS SIZE seems more important. Nothing massive.</p>

<p>2) location (part of the country, driving distrance from home, urban/suburban/small town, weather or geographic features)
•my two preferable locations are on a beach or by the mountains, but I’m flexible
•I live in New England so I’m used to crappy weather, but it might be nice to not worry about the cold so much in the South
•I haven’t looked out west much, with the exception of maybe a school like Boulder in CO (sure it’s cold, but I love to ski) I figured that if it’s gonna be cold, I might as well have something to do
3) culture (jock, intellectual, artsy, hipster, granola, quirky, etc…, liberal/conservative)
•this one I’m not too sure…my high school is currently trying to aid self-entitled individuals by outlawing holiday specific displays etc along with MANY other examples of trying to create equality (such as women only Wednesdays in the gym…), which I’m not a fan of. <does that shed any light on my views? I’m definitely not discriminatory, but I don’t think it should be up to the school to decide these things for us.
•I’m somewhat of a jock now, but I’m not sure how many sports I’ll be playing in college
•I guess I’m between jock/intellectual. Kinda strange to put it that way I guess.
•Definitely not preppy
4) deal-breakers (single sex? religious? cold?)
•I crossed out Michigan from my list due to the cold/no mountains
Then tell us:
3) what you plan to study/professional goals
•see above
4) what you can afford (this one is crucial)
•not very much. I’ll check with my mom, but I know the $56,000 price tag at Wake is daunting for us
5) grades and test scores
•3.73 GPA unweighted. Take all Level 1 classes
•1860 SAT/28 ACT - both weren’t difficult, I just never had time to finish the sections. I recently found out I have ADHD and my counselor said she’ll explain that in her letter regarding my low test scores. Is that a good idea??
6) hooks like URM, legacy, etc…
•from what I know, I have connections at William & Mary, but there may be more. I’ll ask that as well.</p>

<p>Thank you so much for all your help guys!!</p>

11

<p>Now that you’ve got this defined a bit more, you might want to repost asking for schools that meet some or all of these criteria, and which of the schools on your current list are a fit.</p>

12

<p>I don’t have any college suggestions for you, but I want to applaud you for all the thought you are putting into school selection. Maybe you should try this strategy:
Instead of having a long list of schools and trying to find schools to cross off that list… choose one of the schools, research more about it (through college website, CC, etc.) and if you feel it may be a good fit for you, then look/ask for suggestions of college which are similar.</p>

13

<p>Good thought. I’ll repost in the morning. Thank you again for your help on this and any future threads!</p>

14

<p>

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<p><em>shudder</em> that would be a terrible sight to see.</p>

<p>/ENTP :D</p>