<p>One Son has no problem picking colleges, he is applying to six of them. His schools all resemble each other quite a bit. With one exception, they are research school that have an enrollment of around 15k - 20K give or take a few thousand. The schools are in smaller cities or suburban areas near large cities and he stayed in the West. He seems to have sensed where he wants to go and where he fits. He is in the top 10% test scores for each of these schools.</p>
<p>He wanted no part of the "elite"scene" but seemed to really look the engineering departments over when we visited and had a meeting with a professor at each place.</p>
<p>His List
Oregon state
Washington State
Univ of Utah
Univ of Wyoming
Unic of Colorado - Boulder
Colorado School of mines -- (smallest)</p>
<p>Son two is all over the map with 10 selections. I am not sure he really knows what he wants in a college yet.</p>
<p>His list:
Penn
Northwestern
Case Western
USC
Oregon State
Washington State
Utah
Wyoming
Arizona State -- (NMF offer)
Univ of Colorado -- Boulder</p>
<p>I have trouble finding a theme in his list. Anybody else have a D or S struggling with Fit?</p>
<p>I think we'd want to hear a little more about his interests/plans to help see if any of us can find a theme. The list doesn't look so "all over the map" to me. I see different levels of selectivity, which is good. I see decent-sized or large U's (no LACs). I see western half of the US (roughly) except for Penn. I see a number (not all) where a kid who'd like to follow a sports team could have some fun (don't know if that fits your kid).</p>
<p>Son 2 seems to have a preference for schools in or near big cities. The four most selective schools on his list are in those kinds of places.</p>
<p>I suspect that he chose his reach schools from among those that appeal to him most, with an urban environment as a factor, but that he chose his match/safety schools from among those colleges in your region that are familiar to him from family/friends experiences there.</p>
<p>This may be just fine. But on the other hand, if a urban environment is really important to him, perhaps he should search a bit further and see whether he can identify a good safety school in a major city.</p>
<p>Yes son two does like the city to some extent. He spent a week in NYC last summer at Pace University for a computer workshop and loved it.</p>
<p>I think his Safeties of CU - Boulder, Utah, and ASU give him enough city that he is satisfied with those but we did look at Pitt as an option for awhile. The safeties will offer him merit money so there was a motive in choosing those. I guess I was just surprised at the various locations and the range in sizes of the schools.</p>
<p>He is looking into engineering and the Co-OP programs and Internships were important in his choices. The 3-2 engineering programs of many of the LACS were of little interest and he likes the research idea.</p>
<p>He goes to the HS football games and soccer games but is far from a fanatic fan. Frankly, he is more of a computer geek and ultimate frisbee player. Despite a HS letter in Soccer he retired his cleats two years ago.</p>
<p>PS I love the thought that Cleveland or Chicago is in the West LOL my wife and I were talking about how far east he wanted to go with choices like those.</p>
<p>It is OK to not know exactly what you want in a college until after you have been admitted to several possibilities. Some kids really change a lot between the fall of senior year and the spring of senior year! By the way, your Son 2's list seemed to be pretty coherent to me. I don't see anything that stands out as being too far out. Now, if he had a small liberal arts school in the south in the mix, I might wonder. But his schools are enough alike to me. Good luck to both your sons!</p>
<p>I think Son 2 is more the way kids are. I have seen a number of kids put down their ideal criteria , and then find schools that appeal to them that do not fit anything. In fact kids end up at schools that are not at all what they said they wanted. My boys are examples of that.</p>
<p>S. (and I) did a lot of research junior year using old standby college guides and the internet. It turns out that the school that was the best fit for him on paper was also the one he liked best on visiting. Very good chemistry, and even better on second visit. There were others that I was sure he would like (Williams was one) where it just didn't 'click.' I would suggest trying to visit as many as you can, though from your list it looks like there'd be a lot of long-distance (but beautiful!) travel involved...</p>
<p>Lists that make sense to the list maker may not make sense on the surface. Junior has one school on his list that's there because a friend of ours got a full-ride scholarship there, and the application was inexpensive and simple. Low cost to apply, might payoff big, and a reasonable educational fit. It won't look right on his list, but it makes sense if you know the reasoning.</p>
<p>The real kicker is that even after you visit and revisit and do all of the research you can, sometimes the school turns out to be a mismatch for no apparent reason. Just not a good fit. Like shoes that are comfortable in the store, and hurt your feet after you buy them.</p>
<p>An entirely consistant list is not that good an idea. The kid that is making the decision in April is not necessarily the kid choosing schools in September. Several universities were added to D's list as her threshhold (tolerance?) for urban and larger was rising. D's dream school in September had zero sororities and frats, was rural, and with a male to female ratio no worse that 55 % Female/45% Male. These were 3 very important considerations to her. The school she attends is 0 for 3. ;) </p>
<p>Had she not gone to Rhodes, it is highly likely she would have ended up at an urban/relatively urban U. They change that quickly and you need to try to anticipate that change and guide them to apply to a few schools slightly outside their comfort zones. </p>
<p>As an example, she started out wanting rural but later realized that what she "needed" was a reasonably safe campus where everybody lived on campus or close by. A well-defined segregation between campus and town. A traditional campus. Urban schools had more opportunities for "higher-end" volunteer medical placements (St. Jude's and the U of Tenn Med Center) and that became more important to her than the pastoral setting she did and stll does prefer.</p>
<p>I have to say having sent 2 kids to 3 colleges, what the kids think about "fit" when they are choosing a college seems to be very different than what they experience after they get there. The problem for my kids (which I anticipated) is that they were not used to being around so many affluent, overprivileged kids, and there has been a real sense of disconnection. However, the school that is the best socio-economic "fit" for my son (in-state public) is not really an academic/intellectual fit -- he'd like more depth and challenge to his courses. So "fit" may really involve a lot of compromise along the way, in terms of setting priorities.</p>
<p>Excellent point about compromises, CalMom. I think it is easy to get too focused on the idea of a "perfect" fit. There is no such thing. There will be compromises with EVERY school, even "dream schools."</p>
<p>"Fit" can mean different things when looking at different schools. DD's top two choices were U of South Carolina (big flagship U, large sports scene, etc), and Santa Clara University (smaller, private, sports are good but not in the same way as a large U). She's at Santa Clara, but she agonized over the decision because both schools really had what she wanted. In the end, she chose Santa Clara because she really wanted to go to California...and because the size was just a little more approachable to her. I asked her about "fit" and she agreed that either school fit her college needs even though they were very very different from an outsider's point of view.</p>
<p>Yes. My S is another good example. Due to Katrina, he spent his freshman year at both Bates College in Maine and Tulane in New Orleans. Most people would find it odd to see both college on one student's list. In fact, they were <em>not</em> both on his list. Bates was just the right place at the right time for his Katrina visiting term.</p>
<p>As different as they are, he found they both "fit" him. He loved Tulane and liked Bates so much that he would have chosen to stay there when Tulane eliminated his major. But, being a "pure" LAC, Bates didn't have that major.</p>
<p>I find it interesting, but not inconsistent, that he fit both, or both fit him. Much the same as, perhaps, one individual might love opera, country western and heavy metal music. Or love their rural mountain cottage and their urban apartment.</p>
<p>I think the biggest red flag we see on some lists is the student with all small LACs on a list, save the huge in-state flagship U as the safety. Makes us think the safety has been "thrown in" and will be a terrible mis-match if the kid ends up there through lack of other options. Calling it out as a red flag is valid, I think, to test that the kid has thought the safety through. But one kid could find a fit at these "opposites" for the types of reasons outlined above by others. Simply that one environment fits one aspect of the kid, one fits another aspect. Different compromises, but compromises at each.</p>
<p>drizzit,
My parents both went to the University of Utah, and my dad is a faah, irly recent ('97) grad of the engineering school (MechE). My brother and I both looked at the school (me for bio/pre-pharm, him for engineering), but bothwent else where. I thought it was too commuter-y , and he thought it was too cold. That said, my parents both enjoyed their time there as out-of-state, non-Mormons and found many lifelong friends sith whom they sent spend them with today. Some people may feel uncomfortable with the Mormon presence, yes, but having grown up in Utah as a non-Mormon, I find fear of them is generally much over-blown. Ancedotely, more people tried to convert us to Mormonism in Texas than they did in Utah!</p>
<p>The U has a good rep in Utah and has lots of loyal akumni. My dad generally spoke well of his engineering education, with a few humorous ancedotly exceptions. There's a good amount of hands on education in the engineering school, and I think some students actually have patented inventions while there. If you have any specifics you want to know, I can ask my dad for you.</p>
<p>We also know a young man who is graduating this year (I thiink his degree ienvironmental science) who is also a non-Mormon out-of-stater. Except for a bad experience with the swim coach (he was a recruited athlete who dropped his sport due to coach-confllicts), he seemed to enjoy it as well.</p>
<p>It's a great place for those with an interest in the outdoors, especially skiing (I think you mentioned that before). Lots of back country and resort options, depending on preference/affordability. My dad is an avid skiier, and he says it realy is the best snow on earth. Salt Lake is a fun city with a ton to do, though real estate prices are realy high in the area. The U is in a hipper, "quirkier" ara of the city, and the mass transit is great so it's fairly easy to get wherever you want to go.</p>
Keep in mind that often this is a financial decision-- not too many public (i.e. inexpensive) small LACs available. </p>
<p>My son had a list like this, but he had a very difficult time deciding between UC Berkeley and the small LAC he chose. It wasn't a "fit" issue but one of economics -- my son felt that it was a waste of money to go to a large private college (for example, NYU), when the flagship in-state public would offer the same quality of education for a lot less money. I tend to agree with him -- it would be one thing to pay extra for the intimacy, small classes & high level of interaction with faculty at a LAC, quite another to pay the big bucks so that the kid can enjoy more expensive red tape and huge lecture halls. Obviously, there can be a discrepancy in academic caliber of various universities, but its hard to justify a lot of money on a big school if Berkeley @ in-state tuition rates is one of the options. </p>
<p>The real question in assembling the college list was not "fit" but, what do these private or out-of-state colleges offer that the in-state public does not? If that question couldn't be answered in a way that justified the expenditure, then there wasn't much point in applying.</p>