I will choose a path that’s clear
I doubt anything will convince the OP unless his own kid has issues related to fit.
Choosing a college is the first decision kids make in a lifetime of similar choices. Selecting a college by “fit” means helping your kid recognize the things that are meaningful in his life and helping him to prioritize those things. It’s not about greek-or-no-greek or city-vs-cornfields, it’s about identifying your values and applying them to how you live. Some of the “fit” criteria will seem silly or contradictory to us but I don’t think that’s the point.
Learning how to plan and make life choices that go beyond the bottom line on a spreadsheet is what the whole “fit” thing is about. I see how that can look like snowflake coddling but done right, it’s really the exact opposite.
Selectivity will matter in terms of assessing whether the student has a realistic chance of being admitted to the college (or a competitive major at the college, or getting a merit scholarship that is needed to make the college affordable).
Well said and worth repeating.
C’mon @ucbalumnus you know what @snarlatron meant.
^^^ Yes, my CTCL LAC has a very high admittance rate (more than 60%). That has nothing to do with the quality of education or the high rate of acceptance of grads into Med School and Doctoral programs.
This was not what my college experience was like, nor what I wish for my own kids. I think that it is alien to what most of my friends, family, and colleagues believe to be a meaningful college experience.
“Fit” is a nice to have. Just like I fit better in a Bentley Continental GT convertible than in a Toyota Corolla.
But the reality for the average student needing substantial FA, is you make the best of what you can afford.
@GMTplus7 isn’t affordability part of a college being a good fit in the first place? If it’s way to expensive for me, it won’t work for me, and therefore isn’t a good fit.
OP - are you saying that you think there should be an absolute ordering of colleges, that is independent of the student? (Presumably you can take major into account.)
Here’s a related question. Say you have 2 similar students, with similar stats, and the same major goal. Assume they both get in to colleges A & B. Do you think it’s possible for A to be better for one student, while B will be better for the other? Or do you think that’s impossible, and/or indicative of weakness in the child? After all, one will be higher ranked on USWNR and/or will be more “rigorous”.
I can easily imagine “superficial” differences that would make each child more comfortable at different places, and hence more successful. But I think you disagree?
I’m just trying understand what you’re main point is. I think it’s mainly that there should be an absolute ordering of colleges, independent of each student’s non-academic preferences, and that focusing on these other preferences is essentially coddling the child. Is that right?
Unfortunately, too many people don’t include affordability in their perception of fit. That’s why we read about people w 6-figure debt to attend NYU.
But it’s in New Yoooooork!
This doesn’t feel intellectual as much as pseudo intellectual. I don’t quite understand what you think “fit” means, as much as you are saying people worship it. What is it? Is it choice or superficial criteria (subjective)? Are you using a dictionary definition or your own? There are so many colleges at some point everyone applying is making a choice.
I completely disagree with the OP premise. IME here, there are two aspects that are weighted higher than anything else by posters here. Either affordability or prestige (usually one or the other and not both). After that comes a host of other aspects. The only way I can see fit being the outweighing aspect is if you are including in it affordability and prestige… But it doesn’t sound to me like the OP is doing so.
I have kids a few years away still from choosing colleges but I can already state that the order of choosing is by necessity (and practicality because that’s the kind of people we are): affordability & availability of desired major and then all of the more subjective fit attributes.
I think this discussion was off base from the beginning for many of the reasons pointed out, but perhaps the most important one hasn’t been mention. That or I missed it. Which is that the CC demographic is not the same as the entire universe of USA students college applicants.
I really don’t even understand the point @VeryLuckyParent is trying to make, quite frankly. Affordability and ability to be accepted are two aspects of fit that are outside the control of the student in choosing. For most non-CC students, those more than anything else determine where they end up attending school. But CC has a large skewing towards high achieving academic students who therefore can get accepted to a wide variety of schools, which also opens up the financial flexibility in many cases. So what we are talking about here are students that in fact have the ability in many cases to choose between a variety of environments where their educational and fiscal restrictions (or more accurately lack thereof) are very similar. And even if one school is more expensive than another, that is a personal choice of value to be made by that student and the parents. We often think they make silly choices when it comes to spending more than seems necessary, especially if debt becomes involved, but that is their business.
What really baffles me is
That seems like a totally nonsensical argument to me. So if I understand it right, it would be better for a student that hates cold weather, likes the idea of getting to know their teachers well, and knows they will be unhappy in the middle of nowhere should choose a large school in very rural northern Minnesota instead of a school like Rice or Tulane because they need to challenge themselves? Of course that is assuming that the academic stats for all schools are similar, as well as affordability. That makes no sense to me at all. Trust me, I can’t speak about Rice but I know that Tulane, for example, has plenty of requirements both in and out of the classroom that help build character. I feel confident that is true for Rice, Texas, Santa Clara, William & Mary, University of New Mexico and on and on.
I think most kids are, in fact, quite adaptable and I often see them say they are not too picky about the kind of factors you mention. But others are picky, if you will, and most are simply pragmatic that if they have choices that are otherwise similar they can turn to factors such as size, weather, sports environment, etc.
In summary, for most students going to college this is an almost non-existent discussion because their choices are limited. But for much of the CC group, a very lucky group indeed, due to academic excellence and/or financial flexibility, they have choices. Why in the world they would pick the worst possible “fit” for themselves aside from academic fit, which is nearly always the #1 criteria I see them striving for, is beyond me.
@VeryLuckyParent Spring of 1979. I was a junior, thinking about where to apply to college. I looked at my GPA and my PSAT score and concluded that my reach and match schools should come from Barron’s group of Most Competitive schools. At that point there were about 3 dozen schools in that category. I didn’t know what I wanted to major in. My parents told me that, financially, I could go to any school I could get into.
So there I was, 3 dozen excellent schools, all of which would challenge me and provide me with an excellent education and which I could afford. Did I put 3 dozen names in a hat and pull out 5 at random (that plus a safety or two was a normal number of schools to apply to then)? Oddly, no, I did not. I narrowed the list based on fit, on the places where I thought I would be happiest and best thrive.
First, I had geographic preferences. I wanted to stay 3-4 hours from my home in the Boston suburbs and I didn’t want too far north because I had a hard time with cold.
The northeast being the northeast, that left me with lots of choices.
Then I eliminated schools that clearly didn’t make sense for me. No military academies because those were not the right places for me. No MIT, because I didn’t have that kind of intense math/science interest. No all men’s schools because I was a girl. No all women’s schools because I had no interest.
Still plenty of schools. Gotta love the northeast.
So now I started thinking about personality, atmosphere etc. I read about schools in The Insider’s Guide to Colleges. Williams sounded too demographically similar to the town where I grew up and I wanted more diversity. Off the list. The eating clubs at Princeton did NOT appeal. Off the list. Visited Harvard and Yale despite my general lack of interest, because my mother had a bee in her bonnet about them for some reason. Found the people I met unbearably and unjustifiably snotty (yes, yes, I know perfectly lovely people who went to both schools). Off the list. Visited Brown. Liked it a lot. People were nice and interesting and I liked all kinds of things about the school. On the list. Visited Wesleyan. Fell in love! Adored everything about the school. So now the list is starting to have some real substance. First choice: Wesleyan. Second choice: Brown. By now it’s fall of senior year. I apply ED to Wesleyan and work on applications for Brown and several other schools that sound good on paper and that I will visit if I don’t get into Wes. Get into Wes ED! Yay! Love my time at Wesleyan! I got a great education, I was challenged and I had a wonderful time.
So exactly where in that process was I supposed to stop thinking about fit and start picking names out of a hat? Out of the many affordable and academically appropriate schools was I supposed to just pick at random? Would that really have made me a better person with more character? Why?
My son just finished 9th grade. I’ve certainly been planning on taking a similar approach in helping him figure out where to apply, adjusted for his preferences, of course. Go ahead. Convince me that he’d be better off if we pinned a list of academically and financially appropriate schools to the wall (there will be lots) and threw darts.
Let’s take a completely different example. My best friend’s nephew just finished his freshman year in college. He had gotten his heart set on an Ivy he was never going to get into and no one, not him, not his parents, not his GC, paid any real attention to the other schools on his list. So he ended up at a school that’s a terrible fit. It doesn’t have serious EC programs in some activities he really loves. It’s a big school with a social life he finds overwhelming and inhospitable. The school is exacerbating some pre-existing, underlying problems because it’s such a poor fit, where a good fit, a place where he felt comfortable might have eased those challenges. He finds the big, drunken parties that are so much of the social life at this school really uncomfortable. But that’s ok! He’s found a fix! A couple of drinks beforehand really relax him! In fact, alcohol helps so much that before going back to school after Passover, he told his dad he really wanted a drink to help cope with the anxiety of returning to campus. So now he seems well on his way to developing a drinking problem. Poor fit for the win! And yes, there’s every reason to think that, while he wouldn’t be magically problem free, he’d be happier and coping better if some attention had been paid to the kind of school he went to, if fit had been considered.
Seriously @VeryLuckyParent Once a kid has a list of academically appropriate and financially affordable schools, assuming it’s more schools than one ought to apply to, how do you think the list should be narrowed? How should someone decide where to apply? And the. Once acceptances are in, assuming the kid has choices and they’re all affordable, how do you recommend a kid choose? Eeny meeny miny mo?
One of the accepted nuggets of conventional wisdom in the application process is to select the matches and safeties more carefully than the reaches. There are thousands of colleges, and only a small percentage of students will get into Harvard, MIT, or Stanford. It is perfectly fair to build a list based on some non-academic criteria such as weather, athletic programs, cultural offerings, etc. The OP said “it’s not Disneyland,” overlooking the fact that not everybody wants to go to Disneyland. Many young people would prefer to hike in the Costa Rican cloud forest, snowboard in the Rockies, museum-hop in NYC or Paris, or simply curl up and read a good book. Most young people will grow where they’re planted, but many have specific passions that make life worth living: they are pursuing the Engineering and Finance degrees in order to afford the Theater tickets or sailboats. Not every student cares about a football team, but those who do should create their college lists around schools where there will be games to cheer at. Our individual tastes and interests define us as human; why belittle them?
“Finding a fit” would be comparing colleges with relatively equal cost, academic strength, etc.
I don’t see a good fit being a place where everything is sunshine and roses 24/7. A school can be a good fit and still have things about it that are irritating. To me a good fit is about the general atmosphere of a school not minutiae.
I do value resiliency in a person and I do think there is value in working through issues. However, I can’t see any reason why you would discard information about what a person prefers when choosing a college. If you like a quiet, peaceful atmosphere why wouldn’t you seek that in a college? If you like to be in the city (or out of the city) why wouldn’t you seek schools with things you prefer? It really doesn’t make any sense to me to discard those criteria.
If an adult is unhappy it is that person’s responsibility to change their life so that they are happy. If living on campus at college X makes a person unhappy they have the power to change their situation. If we are using the marriage analogy there are times to work it out and times where that isn’t possible. As a developing adult it is a student’s responsibility to make their life work for them. If that includes changing colleges so be it.