<p>I dont think anyone wants to attend a college that is too academically challenging or not challenging enough. So, stuff like ECs and curriculum difficulty in high school could help narrow down colleges one could attend. If the kid was a National Math whiz competition winner who took 15 AP Tests in science math and CS and dual credit in MV Calc, DiffEQ & linear algebra, then the local community college would not be a good fit. Similarly one should find a college that makes financial sense for your particular situation. For example kids from extremely wealthy and very low income families can do quite well at Ivy league schools and other need blind institutions that charge very high tuitions. However, most middle income children may need to look @ universities with merit aid and or state universities. Once these issues have been tackled then one can start dealing with things such as how far the kid wants to live from home, urban rural large small, friends from HS, weather, food choices, ā¦</p>
<p>I donāt want to get political, but there have been some horror stories about minority inner city valevictorians getting accepted to an extremely competitive private university and then failing out, or dropping out because they had so much trouble fitting in. These same students probably would have been successful at a slightly less competitive university. Part of the problem is that these students often had not taken the same level of high school classes as their classmates at the university. </p>
<p>Fortunately, many of the competitive colleges have recognized this problem and have instituted tutoring programs and summer programs for these students before they start regular classes.</p>
<p>My own D could have been academically happy at many schools, but she would have been socially/emotionally miserable at even more. Her idea of bliss was urban, non-Greek, and non-sporty, and we were lucky enough to have time (and money?) enough to find that place for her. </p>
<p>Fit is important in establishing relationships, finding communities in which to live, and maintaining happy workplaces. Why wouldnāt it be important in choosing universities?</p>
<p>FYI, here is the āstarterā list of things to talk about when considering fit (see posts #314 and #315). You can do this with a spreadsheet or index cards, whatever. My two kids had entirely different sets of criteria that they cared about and didnāt care about. it served as a starter to identify āif you like schools x,y and z and canāt articulate why, maybe you might also like schools a,b and c.ā It was in response to a poster who seemed to shoot down all schools being proposed to her, which begged the question of - what was the criteria in the first place that was under consideration.</p>
<p><a href=āhttp://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/599371-daughter-hates-her-matches-safeties-8.html?highlight=criteria+index+cards[/url]ā>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/599371-daughter-hates-her-matches-safeties-8.html?highlight=criteria+index+cards</a></p>
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<p>That has nothing to do with āfit,ā but with academic preparation.</p>
<p>The posts in that thread are really great. Hereās the thing. What a kid thinks they want and what they really want may be very different AFTER some visits!</p>
<p>For example, before we started visiting, my D very much wanted high-mid size to large schools only. So 7,500-30,000 students. She attended a smallish, private Catholic school and wanted a change. So, on a tour of colleges we added a tour of a LAC just because it was a great school and it was not out of the way at all. As you have already guessed, she fell in love with the LAC model! Another example was the location of the school. My D wanted to have access to off campus amenities, so she thought urban or college town settings would be best. Then, once on campus in some city settings, she realized that if the immediate surrounding area wasnāt āsafeā she wasnāt interested. So, that crossed off several urban campuses.</p>
<p>So, the moral of the story is that your kid may not really know what they want until you actually visit.</p>
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<p>Itās a conversation-stopper because youāre apparently missing out on a common social cue, which is that people make the choices they do because they like those choices, and they donāt necessarily wish to dissect those choices for your listening pleasure. </p>
<p>Why did you choose the person you married? Because you fell in love with him. You donāt sit there and tell people, well, he met my criteria of being this tall and having this amount of money or hair or religion or common interests. You fell in love with him. Thatās all people need to know. And maybe sometimes thatās all you can say.</p>
<p>When people are saying, āLucy decided to attend SmallLAC because it was the best fit for her,ā thatās all they are saying. Lucy liked it, and the other considerations fell into place (cost, academics, distance from home, etc.). Why are other people obligated to discuss these things for your benefit? And what relevance would Lucyās personal preferences have to your kid anyway? Best to say, āWell, Iām glad Lucy is enjoying herself there!ā and be genuinely glad for it.</p>
<p>Maybe Lucyās āreasonsā were intangible. So what? Lots of people have āreasonsā I think are trivial. A good friendās daughters wanted lots of sports-school-spirit (along with top notch academics, to be sure). So they wound up looking at Notre Dame and USC and Vanderbilt and crossing Tufts and Emory, equally fine schools, off the list. Not my kidsā criteria, but so what? What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? I donāt āgetā crossing cold northern schools off a list either, but thatās relevant to other kids. Not what I would do, but again, so what? People have different preferences. Thatās why there are 31 flavors at Baskin-Robbins.</p>
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<p>I think charlieschmās point is that one may want to find a college that āfitsā a studentās academic prep. to avoid those outcomes.</p>
<p>IME (with literally thousands of high school students having graduated over my teaching years), fit is often more important than anything else when selecting a college. Fit includes both academic and non-academic factors.</p>
<p>Student Aās top choice could easily be a horrid choice for Student B even if both want the same major.</p>
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<p>I asked the folks on the MIT board about this issue and they said it doesnāt happen at their school because they know what to look for in these situations. Apparently, ECs and other things can tip off whether the applicant is suitale or not. However, at regular schools where kids have options to take APs and such but donāt, schools such as MIT and CalTech would be a bad idea. </p>
<p>I know in my childās case transitioning from an inner city type middle school to a competitive suburban high school was tuff but he managed it. Although, he faced stiff resistance from the high school that wanted him to attend an alternative school because they thought he would fail his AP tests and dropout. Politically, I think they also did not want him to succeed because that would make it hard to reject other kids from his middle school who wanted to do the same.</p>
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<p>I agree, 100%.</p>
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<p>Here is an interesting recent LA Times piece about one such case:</p>
<p>[South</a> L.A. student finds a different world at UC Berkeley - latimes.com](<a href=āhttp://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-c1-cal-freshmen-20130816-dto,0,4673807.htmlstory]Southā>South L.A. student finds a different world at UC Berkeley)</p>
<p>Excerpt:</p>
<p>"His teachers and his classmates at Jefferson High all rooted for the slight and hopeful African American teenager. He was named the prom king, the most likely to succeed, the senior class salutatorian. He was accepted to UC Berkeley, one of the nationās most renowned public universities.</p>
<p>A semester later, Kashawn Campbell sat inside a cramped room on a dorm floor that Cal reserves for black students. It was early January, and he stared nervously at his first college transcript.</p>
<p>There wasnāt much good to see.</p>
<p>He had barely passed an introductory science course. In College Writing 1A, his essays ā pockmarked with misplaced words and odd phrases ā were so weak that he would have to take the class again.</p>
<p>He had never felt this kind of failure, nor felt this insecure. The second term was just days away and he had a 1.7 GPA. If he didnāt improve his grades by school yearās end, he would flunk outā¦"</p>
<p>āFor example kids from extremely wealthy and very low income families can do quite well at Ivy league schools and other need blind institutions that charge very high tuitions. However, most middle income children may need to look @ universities with merit aid and or state universities.ā</p>
<p>It may be a minor point, but this is apples and oranges. Being need-blind/aware affects the chance of admission and has nothing to do with financial aid or merit money. Middle income kids have no disadvantage at need-blind schools.</p>
<p>E.g., our two schools were opposites: NYU is need-blind but doesnāt meet full need; Reed is need-aware but meets full need.</p>
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<p>Who said that there should be? The definition of āfitā is the combination of the studentās and parentsā criteria for college selection. Therefore, it is specific to the student and parents. However, the student and parents need to figure out what their criteria are so that they can approach the selection process sensibly for them (especially if non-local college visits are being considered or planned).</p>
<p>Re: [South</a> L.A. student finds a different world at UC Berkeley - latimes.com](<a href=āhttp://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-c1-cal-freshmen-20130816-dto,0,4673807.htmlstory]Southā>South L.A. student finds a different world at UC Berkeley)</p>
<p>Note that Spencer Simpson, the other student mentioned in the article, was also from a low income single parent background, and attended a [low</a> performing public school](<a href=āhttp://api.cde.ca.gov/Acnt2013/2012BaseSch.aspx?allcds=19646341934231]lowā>http://api.cde.ca.gov/Acnt2013/2012BaseSch.aspx?allcds=19646341934231). However, his single mother was a college graduate who filled the home with books to read. He had a 3.8 GPA in his first semester.</p>
<p>Iād like to suggest the South LA studentās problem may have originated with the high support he got from his hs, when applying. As I recall, they went to bat for him and may have, as a unit, done him the disservice of overconfidence, predicting everything would be just fine in a competitive college (as I often say, because, in his hs, things were.) His actual āfitā may have been a different college. Perhaps one with a different range of strengths- and struggles- among peers.</p>
<p>^ I agree. The point of āfitā is to find schools that will best serve students, not simply the most highly ranked schools.</p>
<p>āLetās lose the word āfitā in the college selection process, and talk about listing specific objective criteria our sons and daughters value (eg, school size, weather, distance from home, academic rigor, etc.), and focus them on deciding among a list of schools that meet these criteria.ā</p>
<p>I agree with the OPās assessment that a studentās perceptions of a place may be predicated on such criteria as rankings and other outside professional āopinionsā, family preferences, the weather, the comfiness of the couches in the student union, etc. But I donāt know, I think thereās more to it than campus size, academic rigor, climate (as in weather), distance from home and other measurable parameters. A campus where everyone is pressured into going Greek and centering their social lives around their particular sorority or fraternity could cause a student to be uncomfortable or perpetually annoyed if said student is not into that. Or a campus climate where everyone is so geared towards studying because of impossible workloads that the school has to close the library on Saturday night to force students to take a breakāI could see some students being a little put off by an all-work-and-no-play community, even if academically equipped enough to handle it. Or a school where the major form of weekend entertainment is drinking or smoking until youāre insensateā¦all examples Iāve pulled from actual encounters. Some students will clamor for it, others will run for the hills.</p>
<p>āFitā is where a student thinks he or she will be comfortable: academically, socially, and spiritually. I agree that a na</p>
<p>Addendum: of course, if all one cares about is getting the best education at the level oneās family could afford and just concentrating single-mindedly on earning that degree and hang the rest as superfluous, then sure, looking at the selection process strictly in terms of measurable tangibles is entirely appropriate, and I see nothing wrong with that either. Itās just a question of what the student expects to get out of the next four years. You make the appropriate sacrifices in the hope that it will be worth it.</p>
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<p>However, your example of fraternity and sorority presence and whether they are the main part of campus social life is a measurable tangible, although perhaps not as precisely as some other criteria. Of course, one also has to be careful of how one measures such things ā for example, a street full of fraternity and sorority houses may give the impression of a huge presence, but a big school may have enough students to fill those fraternities and sororities while the percentage of students in them is small and the fraternities and sororities are easily ignored by the uninterested.</p>
<p>I.e. considering how fraternities and sororities affect the campus social life is a perfectly valid and measurable criterion to include in the definition of āfitā for a student who considers that important. Meanwhile, some other student may not care at all about that or anything else besides cost and academic offerings; for such a student, āfitā is based only on cost and academic offerings.</p>