Not everyone is a “bloom where you are planted” kind of kid who will just “love” every school they might land at, as you did, OP. There is nothing wrong with asking why certain schools are on a list, imo. My D had preferences, based in part on her knowing that she has NOT had positive experience “wherever”. I guess if for a kid it’s all about academics and they are great at shutting out everything else that may or may not be negative, then sure, apply anywhere that the academics match. But I don’t think most people operate that way.
My D knew from tours, HS events at college and summer programs what a wide variety of colleges are like. She chose to apply only to small colleges, with two exceptions. She ended up choosing one of the smallest, and she is very happy there. The out-of-classroom experiences of being in a school where everyone knows her name is something that she wanted. I’m not going to fault her for that.
Sometimes it’s about the major too, my friend’s son’s list would make no sense whatsoever, big/small, state/private, cold climate/warm climate… until you looked up the top computer science programs in the country. I don’t think all kids go down a list and say, ok 4 seasons, smaller school, good Greek life, nice college town… and choose that way.
It’s hard to believe there exists a kid with truly no “type preference” if you define “type” a lot more broadly than big v. small, public v. private, Ivy v. non-Ivy. A kid with no preference is left with no way to choose between the 1000+ colleges in the country. Preferences can include being close to SO, being close to (or far from) home, weather, political climate, majors offered, ethnic diversity, graduating debt-free, USNWR ranking, nice campus/dorms/food, city setting, and on and on.
For every kid there are areas where they do have preferences and areas where they don’t. Parents may or may not take those preferences into consideration if they are paying.
I will grant that some users can be very pushy about preferences in specific areas where any given kid may not care about that particular thing.
Sometimes posters aren’t very clear about why they are applying to a diverse range of schools so people jump to the conclusion that they haven’t done their research. Sometimes it’s not really a jump because there are other clues in the post that also point to lack of research.
Agree with @snoozn and @Otterma - oftentimes a kid (or parent) will post with nothing, or with nothing but stats. Or they’ll put a diverse list of schools and ask for opinions without explaining the logic behind the list. Sometimes there’s a good reason - such as top computer science programs, or schools offering advanced language offerings - but sometimes it’s just a list taken from the USN&WR top rankings, or a random list of schools the student has heard of but knows little about.
To truly help, a series of filters is needed to narrow the list. The most common have a lot to do with “type”. That doesn’t mean “type” is critical for everyone or is the be-all and end-all - just that, for most kids who haven’t given any other specifics, things like location, size of school, greek life, urban/rural, are some useful ways to filter.
Sometimes, even students who have a set of criteria will make exceptions. I was one of those. I wanted a small college, and I had the stats to apply to selective ones. But I included one large university in my list because several people from my high school, including the previous year’s valedictorian and the older brother of one of my friends, were attending that school and had very positive things to say about it. Since I went to a high school that sent very few graduates to selective colleges, their good opinion of this particular school counted for a lot with me. And that large school was where I ended up.
At 17, all my younger son knew is that he wanted to study computer science or computer engineering. And, that was more about a desired major than I knew at his age! His school counselor and I gave him ideas of places to visit all over the USA based on his stats, since he didn’t have a strong opinion about small vs. large, or warm weather vs. cold, or big city vs. small town/rural, or big sports vs. lesser sports, LAC vs. university, etc. We visited as many as we could afford. He applied to a bunch of schools, got accepted to quite a few, and finally narrowed his decision down to one after re-visiting several during the spring. The schools he liked best were east and west coast, ranging in size from 800 to about 24,000 undergrads, public and private. In the end, a university setting where he was flexible to study comp sci, engineering and/or anything else became the right answer for him. From what I am reading here, he is not all that unique.
I do not think a kid at 17 needs to have firm opinions about a type or size of school before applying, unless that is just his/her nature. My older son did have stricter parameters for school attributes, so that actually made the college search and application list a lot more manageable. His interests included decent academic reputation for Mechanical Engineering, NROTC, warm weather, big football, fraternities. I think he got it all.
This question of a college list having a certain “uniformity” or common thread is important to me. I have no data to support this, but just a hunch that the number of transfers has skyrocketed in the past 10 years because kids go to schools that simply don’t fit their personalities, needs and tastes.
BUT what really burns me is that these condescending alpha admissions officers SAY they are divining which kids fit their distinctive-totally-not generic institutions YET appear to be chasing the same group of hooked and angular/quirky kids. Really no or little consideration which kids will really appreciate and thrive in their distinctive-totally-not generic institution.
OP- you did three different kinds of education at your three different schools. It is vastly different to be in a grad or professional school at any institution compared to the undergrads’ experiences.
Your DD can’t go to every type of college. A large college that has dorm themes within it, or cohorts, and also has a lot of community and environment interest might work best.
I agree with you @CValle that many (but not all) kids could thrive at a wide range of schools. Of course people have preferences, but not everyone can afford their 1st preference-- I get over it that I’m not driving a Bentley Continental GT convertible.
I think it’s either a crush or conceit when students/parents insist it MUST BE schoolX, and schoolX only.
Few kids actually choose among 1000+ colleges. Most choose among schools that are familiar in one way or another.
Consider my family, for example. My husband and son both went to their flagship state universities. I went to a college that was popular among academically inclined kids from my high school. My daughter went to my alma mater. None of us chose those colleges at random.
“BUT what really burns me is that these condescending alpha admissions officers SAY they are divining which kids fit their distinctive-totally-not generic institutions YET appear to be chasing the same group of hooked and angular/quirky kids. Really no or little consideration which kids will really appreciate and thrive in their distinctive-totally-not generic institution.”
That’s a bold statement. Is this just the vibe you are getting, @Oregon2016, or do you have concrete evidence to support your thoughts?
I applied to schools as small as 2400 undergrads and as large as 20,000, and I ended up at a school of 14,000, which is on the larger end of all the schools I applied to. I was accepted to schools as far north as Connecticut and as far south as Florida, but chose a school in North Carolina. Most schools were private, but I chose a public. Thought I was gonna stay North, but instead went South. My preferences in a university changed radically between the start of my junior year and the end of my senior year when I finally picked a school.
Some students do have strong parameter parameter requirements and others not so much. DS applied to schools sized from 350 students (now his alma mater) to 30,000 in a variety of types/settings. He was very flexible, recognizing the scholarship money was a factor too. (Back then, it was not as easy to run NPC estimations).
I honestly think he would have thrived in any one of them. He started at a very large school and liked many things about it, but then he transferred based on academic program reasons. Looking back he recognizes the pros/cons of both environments I’m happy to report that in both cases he leveraged the pros (and mitigated the cons).
My kid appeared to enjoy D and he isn’t particularly into the outdoors and definitely not into winter sports. He also was not initially interested in the Greek scene, although he ended up joining a frat. Fraternities at D are very much unlike those at most other schools, and a lot of kids join them there who would never consider it at an SEC school, for example. I think the problem is more a somewhat unrealistic image of D on your part, to tell you the truth. There is the stereotype associated with each school, and there is the reality, which is usually much more diverse.
What Cal and D have in common is a certain intellectual quality. What sets them apart is size. What makes the real difference, IMHO, is money. For a California resident who is likely to receive generous need-based aid from D, they are both viable choices. We never even considered great schools such as Cal or U Mich for my S because as an OOS student they were completely out of reach financially. D gave S basically a full ride, which was what he needed.