<p>On the other hand, all of us want the GOOD for our childrenin the Platonic/Aristotelian sense. The GOOD is, inter alia, seen as prestigious. Moreover, it is often unclear what the GOOD might be for our children so we often rely on the chattering-classs estimation of how a particular school is viewed within the public at large to reinforce our splintered understanding; that is to say, the public view is not only, ipso facto, prestige-itself, but an honest indicator of what is believed to be good - publicly. How could a responsible non-expert-parent ignore the public assessment of what school is goodor better?</p>
<p>Due to our own parental ignorance of what was good, we pretty much followed our daughters lead and did no more than to affirm what she came to believe about this or that schoolbut we were never unaware of what the public opinion of this or that school would be; we read the books, talked to GCs and listened to our family and friends and maneuvered in the background.</p>
<p>Lastly, there is a lot of talk about fit: a nebulous concept in the best of circumstances. Is it really simply a combination of like/dislike, program (though the majority of students do not seem to know what they will do with their lives at this point and thus have no idea what their major will be) and public information/opinion (prestige as-such)?
Our daughter loved her pick, Dartmouth, so much that we had to back-track to feel comfortable with Dartmouth on the turn around (I liked Swarthmore, my wife liked MIT). I pretty sure our daughter picked the school she did for the environment and kids attending it: basically smart laid-back kids she sees as she views herself; I dont think it was the prestige/program of the school. I dont believe you can call this fit, but rather a question of personal identity; she thought of Dartmouth students as my-kind based on the identity of the students, not the school.</p>