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I think it would depend on what a student wants to study. If he wants to study engineering, I think Georgia Tech is ranked higher than Emory. Likewise ranking is higher for CMU over Harvard when it comes to CS. Cornell’s Engineering is better than Yale’s Engineering, ranking wise.</p>
<p>Love post #58.</p>
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<p>True… another example would be an unstated assumption among many posters here that an HBU is automatically a poor fit for a non-black student, even though there seems to be no issue with recommending predominantly white schools to non-white students.</p>
<p>A high percentage of the top-ranked colleges and universities are located in northern climates, including some extremely cold and snowy locations. For many young people, that alone would make them a poor fit. After all, who wants to be stuck in winter conditions until April?</p>
<p>(in a perfect world, you go southward to college during the winter and then come back home to the north for the summer).</p>
<p>More tricky - if my oldest hadn’t gotten into Carnegie Mellon should he have chosen RPI or WPI over Harvard? I made him apply to Harvard because I thought he’d like it better than he thought he would and I knew there were plenty of nerdy science and math people there, though obviously it’s not the best place for computer science. In fact, that was exactly his experience at accepted students weekend. The CS department at Harvard is small, but it’s full of smart people and there were plenty of kids like him there after all.</p>
<p>As it happened he got into CMU, and while it was difficult to turn down Harvard, he did and had no regrets. (And neither did his parents.)</p>
<p>I’m a big believer in “fit.” I agree it’s a catch-all for a lot of different kinds of objective and subjective criteria and that those criteria vary from student to student, so that if you only say “fit” and don’t say more it can be uninformative, but so what? Sometimes you don’t want to list all the criteria, either because it would be tedious for the listener or because, as someone suggested upthread, it’s none of the questioner’s da**ed business.</p>
<p>I also agree that having the ability to focus on fit is something of a luxury. But not entirely. I didn’t come from a privileged background. My parents might have preferred that I attend our nearest public university but it was a STEM (primarily engineering) school from top to bottom and I knew I just wasn’t cut out to be an engineer; I was actually quite good at math and science, but STEM fields just didn’t interest me. So I held out for our state flagship where I knew I would have a wider range of curricular choices and where I knew the academics were at a higher standard, and it worked out financially. That decision, simple as it was, was about “fit”; the engineering school would have been a bad fit for me, just as a school without engineering (e.g., most LACs, or the University of Chicago) would have been a bat fit for my brother who never wanted to study anything but engineering.</p>
<p>Both of my daughters were very clear that they wanted small schools with small classes, close relationships between faculty and students, rigorous academics, strong in humanities and social sciences, and no big party scene–preferably no Greek scene at all. D1 didn’t want to end up anyplace too cold. D2 didn’t want to end up anyplace too warm or anyplace that didn’t have four distinct seasons, including pretty fall colors and at least some snow in winter. They both ended up at outstanding LACs in the Northeast. I’m convinced that was the right choice for each of them. Those were “fit” factors. They had the academic chops to get into probably 99% of the colleges in the country, but probably 98% of the colleges in the country would not have been as good a fit for them as the colleges they ultimately chose to attend. And yes, they had the luxury to choose, because they weren’t precluded from any school by cost and they weren’t precluded from very many by academics. Most students don’t have such a wide range of choices, and consequently most students can’t be so choosy; as katliamom says, the “can I get in?” and “can I afford it?” questions dramatically narrow the range of choices for most students. But to the extent you have choices, there’s nothing wrong with exercising those choices based on criteria that you really case about. That’s all people mean by “fit.”</p>
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<p>For starters, that’s backwards. Finding the list of schools IME starts long before writing those essays. It HELPS with writing the essays, because then the student has some clue about why they’re applying to the colleges on their list. </p>
<p>The “variation” we give on finding the right fit is a fairly lengthy one. Someone on CC years ago suggested having a huge stack of index cards labelled with various things about college–size, location, yes, also: rah-rah atmosphere, research opportunities, living on campus all four years, good vegetarian options, and on and on and on. You gave the stack of cards to your kid a bit at a time and had them sort the cards into “must have”, “would be nice”, “don’t really want” and “no way” piles. And voila: you’ve got the beginnings of fit.</p>
<p>I have one kid who would fit anywhere and one who fits nowhere.</p>
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<p>And it’s not just northern climates, it’s the northeast in many cases. Not everyone wants to be there, even though you’d never know it on this site.</p>
<p>I turned down Michigan for a much lower ranked (but still top 100) university, one that was a much better fit. Second best decision I ever made. I still get flack about it from some people, especially on cc. I think it’s funny that other people care what I turned down.</p>
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<p>Okay, well, that begs the question: what was the BEST decision you ever made? :D</p>
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<p>not to answer for romani, but she will probably say “the best decision I ever made was to start posting on CC”</p>
<p>=P</p>
<p>Fit, by far, is the key determining factor in making a good college choice.</p>
<p>It should be the absolute #1 priority in the college search process.</p>
<p>"</p>
<p>The “variation” we give on finding the right fit is a fairly lengthy one. Someone on CC years ago suggested having a huge stack of index cards labelled with various things about college–size, location, yes, also: rah-rah atmosphere, research opportunities, living on campus all four years, good vegetarian options, and on and on and on. You gave the stack of cards to your kid a bit at a time and had them sort the cards into “must have”, “would be nice”, “don’t really want” and “no way” piles. And voila: you’ve got the beginnings of fit."</p>
<p>That was me. I created a list like that. It’s on CC someplace, don’t remember the thread.</p>
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<p>However, an undefined notion of “fit” is not really that helpful. But a useful notion of “fit” that incorporates all of the criteria the student uses to select a college simply defines “fit” as the combination of such criteria.</p>
<p>Why does there need to be a universal definition of “fit”? I knew it when I saw it with my older child and I just experienced it this weekend on tours with my younger (one school was a great fit and the other was not). It is full of intangibles in addition to things my child or I could identify. So what?</p>
<p>Why are there so many parents attempting to force their opinion down other folks throats with respect to their own personal college selection process? </p>
<p>I have a colleague who was adamant that my families’ selection process should not include “fit”. This person insisted that our son remain in our region and attend Purdue. Both schools have excellent engineering programs. This person knew nothing about my son’s interests or career goals. The school my son selected was without a doubt the right fit for my son. Fast forward four years later my son graduated from Cornell and placed on the fast track program with his company and is doing quite well. My colleague commented last week that he still did not understand our selection process. (Go figure!)</p>
<p>Well, that sounds like a - let that one fall flat on the ground. What concern was it of his was your selection process was, and why did he think necessary for him to “understand” it? What a boor.</p>
<p>I agree with Sally. I know what fit is for my kids. I couldn’t really care less if other elements of fit are more important to other kids.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t pay $60 for sneakers that don’t fit my kid - why would I pay $100K for a college that doesn’t fit my kid?</p>
<p>^Haha. Exactly, glido.</p>
<p>I should add that we also used a process similar to what Pizzagirl did to help our son sort out variables that were important to him (except we did it on a spreadsheet rather than index cards). By doing this early, we were able to make better use of the opportunities to visit (and saw only schools we had a good feeling would be at least a decent fit).</p>