<p>Ok, if "fit" is a code word for coddling then maybe I understand it. If there were a chance that an immature or fragile student might not make it at Big Time U. and have to move back home a failure, or worse, but could manage to survive and grow up enough in four years at Caring Small U., then certainly that would be the better choice. I sympathize with anyone in that situation.</p>
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Ditto, and worth repeating!</p>
<p>You can call it coddling. Whatever it is if you can increase the chances of your child succeeding and enjoying college life, it is something a parent wants to do. For thoses kids who are so well adjusted, organized, disciplined, motivated, it really is not so important where they go to college. But there are kids who are not so well balanced. They just may be immature, and time will take care of the situation. But the time is often best spent at a college rather than at home where kids post highschool age can find all kind of distractions from academia if they were never really into it anyways. Also this is the age where mood disorders run rampant and though you may call it coddling, if things do not go right in this area, it can be a tortuous experience for a family. Worth quite a bit to alleviate some of those symptoms, believe me.</p>
<p>LOL. I'm just too darn old and tired to fight about this stuff right now but would y'all please just mark me down as "Offended" about the "fit = coddling" posts? Thanks. I'd really appreciate it. </p>
<p>Maybe I'll get a second wind, who knows? ;) </p>
<p>Carry on.</p>
<p>I don't think fit=coddling. It's smart to go with a fit. It's when you have to weigh in other factors like the expense, is when the coddling concept comes into play. My friend's daughter was accepted to a great LAC that did not offer her any money. Her father whose income precluded her from aid refused to cough up any college money, and in that state he was within his rights to do so. My friend did not have the money to send here to her "fit" school, much as she would have loved to have "coddled", so the young lady went to a local state school and commuted, and worked part time to afford the COA there. Not a good fit in terms of what she and her mother wanted for her for a college experience, but she did well and got through fine, though she will say that she so much wanted to go away to a smaller more personal school. Her brother did not fare so well. The bureacracy and large classes, and lack of much social structure really stymied him, and he found his interest drifting from college, and he basically quit/flunked out after a year and a half there. Though the same may have happened had he gone to a smaller residential school, I think it just might have made the difference for him. The large classes, the impersonal commuter air of the school just had no appeal to him. It may well be coddling him too send him to a school that is more personal, but I think most parents would want to do this, particularly if they know that it would likely raise chances for success. THough my friend also would have loved to have coddled her daughter through a smaller school that gave more attention, she knew from the get go that her daughter was highly likely to successfully complete any college program. With her son, she felt the stakes ere higher.</p>
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Ok, if "fit" is a code word for coddling then maybe I understand it. If there were a chance that an immature or fragile student might not make it at Big Time U. and have to move back home a failure, or worse, but could manage to survive and grow up enough in four years at Caring Small U., then certainly that would be the better choice. I sympathize with anyone in that situation.
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capt, This post is what I was speaking of in particular but your postings continue to tweak me , too. ;)
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A friend of ours who has always been a strong proponent of state schools, knew that her youngest was just not State U material because of some of the immaturity and weaknesses he had when he was 18. It just made for a less stressful experience for all when he went to a smaller college.
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For those who are strong students and emotionally/mentally stable, there is a good chance of blooming whereever planted. But some kids just have special needs. They may not diagnosed or categorized into a special need category, but they just do not thrive in certain environments. It is a painful situation when you stick one of them into a college that just does not fit them.
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Kind of makes it sound like those searching for a small caring environment to learn in are mental cripples , doesn't it? Just couldn't hack it at the BIG BOY school? LOL. </p>
<p>Sorry. We just didn't approach it that way. D didn't apply to any state schools (other than a BA/MD Program at Tech), or any schools over 10,000 students. Why? Because she hated the environment. Hated the schools. Could she have thrived? Sure. But why? There are fine schools that fit her better. She applied to those. What's so difficult to understand? It wasn't maturity, or mental instability I can assure you. It was her well-founded decision based on research, conversations, weekends, and her gut feel.</p>
<p>(She did consider small state schools that fit the same profile of her small uni's and LAC's. It's not the "state" part she had issue with, it's the size and feel.) </p>
<p>I still find it stunning when kids have Williams, Amherst, Smith, and Purdue. Or Vassar, Wellesley, Duke, Yale and the University of Texas. Just boggles my mind that fit isn't foremost, when that fit is affordable. (If it's not affordable, you do what you have to do. We would have. D would have gone to the an LAC ranked in the 80's where she qualified for auto-merit that brought the price down to our Fafsa EFC. She really liked the school much better than UT or A+M and the $ difference would have been less than $20K over 4 years.) </p>
<p>(Now, like I said, I'm tired so I'll criticize my own post and save a little time. UT has Plan II and I CAN see a student having Plan II on their list of small schools. Just not UT in general. ;)</p>
<p>(Before you think she's some shrinking wallflower, she will flat knock you out. LOL. She's a competitive, outgoing, beautiful, hard charging, state champion athlete who has never backed down from a challenge. She wanted LAC or small uni. She figured out how to get it and she got it. Just like everything else she ever strived for in her life. So far at least. ;))</p>
<p>Gee, I did get a second wind. Amazing. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz.</p>
<p>Some people wear Levi 501s and they like em ;) they just scooch em over or under their belly as needed.
Don't see the need to actually get pants that might fit, maybe even with a little * spandex* so that they look a little better?
They might have to go as far as to wear suspenders to get them to stay on, but they are damned if they are going to try on 100 pair of dungarees just to find the perfect fit.
Who needs a tailor when they do what is needed and keep you from being picked up for indecent exposure.
Of course someone else, may grit their teeth and wade through that pile on the dressing room floor, but once they have found them- hoo boy!
It was worth it. While the wearer of the suspenders and the ill fitting jeans may not know what they are missing, once their compadre has found their perfect pair, they will never go back to just throwing on what ever. ( unless they are mucking the stalls of course)</p>
<p>ek4, :):):):). I bet your jeans fit. Am I right?</p>
<p>Curmudgeon, your daughter made the right choice. </p>
<p>That doesn't change the fact that the concept of fit is taken to extremes.</p>
<p>My kid is an academic star. He was doing division at age 3. He was reading the classics in grade school. He was number 1 in his class. He was number 1 in the state. He is so advanced that only 7 people can now understand him. When he leaves his bedroom he falls asleep within 30 seconds because the world moves too slow for him and the sheer boredom knocks him out. There are 3 1/2 schools that fit him to a tee, 3 1/2 where he can thrive. If he doesn't get into one of those, his brain will atrophy and rot and he will never be able to function in society. He will be stuck in his bedroom for the rest of his life doing crossword puzzles and sudoku while wearing Spiderman pajamas.</p>
<p>I hope he gets into one of those schools that fits him so well. :)</p>
<p>so for those who didn't get that- I think fit is important and you might as well go for it.
Yes my D does actually have "special needs" which we did keep in mind when looking at schools.
She also has a 160+ IQ, and graduated from a rigourous prep school, that was much too small to hide in, she would have done fine in our state flagship university. However, she decided to attend a college known as Parris Island of the academic world, where she went into it knowing she would have more writing and reading in one class, than some large university students have to do all year. She woudnt have the distractions of the weekend football games, she would have the library, she wouldn't have Thursday night parties ( since class isn't held at so many schools on Friday) she would have the library & she wouldn't have spring break on some sunny beach, she would have the library ;)
Senior year, she had her own lab office- she didn' t have to go to the library-and if she hadn't been doing a science thesis, she would have had her own thesis desk * in * the library.
Such coddling I have never seen the likes- Its a wonder they can even walk across the stage :0 ( must be why so many of them stay in school so long they are post docs)</p>
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OOOOHHHH!!!That kind of fit. That kind of "my kid can only thrive with other exotic orchids of great value" fit "and without this ultimate school he will die" fit . LOL. Now I see your point dstark. Ding them folks all you want. It won't bother me none. ;)</p>
<p>But how does that 1/2 a school thing work? ;) (Would that be like Deep Springs?)</p>
<p>Curmudgeon, in all seriousness, you did a great job. </p>
<p>"But how does that 1/2 a school thing work?"</p>
<p>A lot of straddling. :)</p>
<p>dstark. I just drove the bus, or in this case pickup truck. One thing we do have to remember, if the kid ain't got the goods most of what we talk about on this site won't help. You can put lipstick on a pig but.....to put a cc spin on it, Katherine Cohen still can't get her into Harvard. ;)</p>
<p>Yes, you're right.</p>
<p>Curmudgeon, don't know when it's coddling and when it's fit all of the time. I guess it's coddling when you are sacrificing more than you really want to in order to give the child a better fit. It's not coddling when the kid has a number of choices, and feels a certain school "fits" better, and everyone is fine with the choice. Some kids, really don't have a particular fit school prototype and can like the "feel" of UTAustin, and also like Williams, and dislike another large state school and Amherst. The fit thing is not a science, more of a feel.<br>
Many kids transfer after a year or so of a school that just doesn't fit. Is it coddling to allow it? Though the fit thing is sometimes way overblown, it does exist, and is sometimes important in the happiness, health and the continuing of education process. It's not easy to have a child who needs a good fit in environment . But many times, these kids just need more time to grow up. Some really immature kids that had meltdowns in college in my day, somehow managed to pull it together and are quite well adjusted, happy, self sufficient adults. It's just that a few year of the process of growing up was quite painful. An environment that fits some of those needs can make things a lot less stressful for all. There are, of course, kids who are going to bomb regardless of environment, and there are those, like your daughter, Curmudgeon, who will probably thrive nearly anywhere, and "fit' or "coddling" are extras.</p>
<p>I watched last year as my DDs friends (parents and kids included) agonized over fit. The ratio of those who are transferring to school B is starting to tip in that direction as half a year is over. Things can change, or things can turn out to be different than they appeared. Know your kid. Know yourself. Agonizing too much over the "best" fit is probably not a very good idea.</p>
<p>When I think of "fit" I think of my son and the wonderful top LAC that was recruiting him. He and I loved our recruiting visit (I say "our", because the parents actually were invited and had activities- we paid our own way as did the kids) and loved the coach, campus and academics. It was clearly the best combination of academics and athletics in the country to be offered for an athlete of my son's level. My son wanted to like it so much, but it just wasn't the right fit for him. After boarding school, it was simply too small and too rural. He would have gone crazy after a year. I clutched my purple sweatshirt to my chest, gazed over the wooded running trails up the mountains, and said goodbye. HELLO, Philadelphia, land of my raising. "YEAH-waddaya want? Hurryup. I ain't got all day!" There's a reason I live in the south..... BUT-as it turned out, I wasn't the one going to college this time around.....</p>
<p>The concept of "fit", I agree, can be taken to extremes, but I want for my son a college where he'll be mostly in small discussion-based classes (that's how he learns best) and where people won't look at him like he's a goon from the moon when he says something. That's fit. It doesn't have to cost a bazillion dollars or have a fancy name.</p>
<p>Curm, did not mean to be offensive. I really can imagine situations where a more nurturing environment could make instead of break some kids, and am all for that. And some people are using that definition for "fit." Other than that, I keep getting the impression that people are just saying a Cadillac fits them better than a Kia, and I say well duh.</p>