So before I tell this anecdote I’ll say that I do think quality of life factors like location are important. But that said, my daughter made her final decision between her top 2 schools partially based on going to the admitted student days for them. This story is 2nd hand from her and my husband. Anyway, at both schools there was a panel where admitted students could ask questions of current students and of course the question always comes up, ‘what’s the best thing about this school?’ I guess at Willamette each student on the panel had a different answer to that question. At Lewis and Clark, every kid’s answer was some variation of “it’s in Portland!”
Can also be replaced with “Well, you know, US News ranks it as ” as if their rankings apply equally well to any possible student…
Here’s a personal anecdote:
In China, everyone in my school can memorize USNWR, and they chose their schools roughly based on the ranking.
SO EVERY YEAR WHEN USNW releases their ranking, you can hear conversations like this
“How is UCI 33 rn? like how”
“Tufts raised their ranking by 1, now 27, yay”
“Wow, Northwestern is top ten this year”
CHOOSING SCHOOLS BASED ON RANKING IS NOT THE BEST WAY!!!
Another method that Chinese students do is to choose their schools based on the easiest school to get in within that tier without considering anything else. For example, WFU and NYU are roughly equal in ranking, but they are completely different schools!!!
For Example, if a student aims for t3, they would apply to Chicago, cuz it’s the easiest to get in for top 3 us colleges
Aiming for Ivy they would apply to Cornell
Aiming for top 20 they would apply to most likely Emory
Top 30 they would do NYU or WFU
TOP 45 They would do BU
Maybe not this year…
College selection is a very personal process. Given that it’s a big country with a myriad of opinions, backgrounds, preferences and interests it’s uninformed for anyone to assume the metrics by which they assess colleges are the same metrics that should be used by all applicants.
Pick based on what’s important to you - you’re the one that has to attend. Who cares what the other people are doing?
One of S19’s friends applied to Duke early without having done anything but a tour. Didn’t sit in on class, talk to any students, stay overnight, interview…none of that. When asked why Duke was his first choice, he said it was because his private college counselor told him that, out of the schools on his list, Duke would be the one that he would get the biggest boost ED. And he was denied. (He’s an amazing student with very high grades and scores but Duke was even rougher this year than in the past.)
He’s actually glad. He prefers other schools. But those schools are even bigger reaches than Duke and he probably should have reevaluated his list but nope. Applying to a bunch of Ivies. Has his safety in his back pocket if needed.
I just can’t believe it when kids go ED without doing a decent amount of research. I know kids who have gone ED to be recruited athletes and they’ve met the coach but not the team and then they get there and hate the team that they now need to spend almost all of their time with. I know for a fact that you can meet team members before going ED. You can spend the night with one and get to know the personality of the team. It’s no wonder some kids don’t feel like they fit at their “first choice” when they do so little legwork.
Counterpoint: I think people (especially students) are resilient enough to fit the environment. Granted, I wouldn’t send a STEM focused person to the Cleveland Conservatory of Music. But, a person who is able to be accepted at MIT and Columbia and Dartmouth and NYU and UCLA and Virginia and Tulane and Williams and Richmond will most likely be able to be successful there. We experts, talk about these institutions like we know what it is like to live at all of them, but at the end of the day we can only really have expert opinions on one/maybe two of them (two is very rare as it is really tough to transfer into one of these schools at the undergrad level). We can talk about our experience as a teacher at one and a student at another, but at very best our experience at one as a student is really the only first hand experience we have (and in some cases that could be dated, is Chicago the same today as it was 18 years ago?). We can also talk about what it’s like to be a undergrad at one and a graduate at another, but again the graduate experience is so different from the undergrad that it is tough. Because of this kids need to research their choices and one of those data points is the rankings. Are they perfect? No, but they are a data point to be considered. I think the best advice I could give is to find a current freshman at a perspective school that matches them (same major interest, maybe knew from the year before at High School, if not possible, then through other methods) and have a conversation.
At the end of the day, what leads to success at the Undergrad level depends so much more on the student then it does the institution. If a person, rationally or not, thinks that they can be most comfortable studying in buildings that remind them of Hogwarts, then I’m not going to talk them out of it. I may not agree, but their perception is also their reality.
Here’s a real (and I think good) reason to choose a school: the student has a relative or close family friend nearby who could serve as a support network. All other things being more or less equal or unknown, I see that as a good reason to choose college A over cover B. I’m told that that’s the kiss of death to actually admit to admissions, though.
24 [quote] Pick based on what's important to you - you're the one that has to attend. Who cares what the other people are doing?
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That’s fine to say, but then the student has to go through the exercise of figuring out what matters and then doing some investigation to actually get what’s important. If nothing matters then don’t go, or go cheap. But if something will bother you or not having something will be a disappointment, then you have to make some effort. I think that kind of laziness or passive requirements setting is the crux of many of these bad examples.
Speaking of which, how about making a particular coach a major factor in school choice? They churn constantly, and the athletics may not even work out due to injury or disinterest.
At least the coach is probably someone they will interact with regularly. I’ve met very charismatic admissions officers that probably have convinced kids to come to their school — and you never see ‘em again after arriving at the school.
@StPaulDad - you are misunderstanding my point. We’re on the same side- each applicant needs to do his/her own work to figure out what criteria are most important to him/her. Rankings and other people’s opinion may (or may not) be a place to get ideas of where to start your own personal research but shouldn’t be a substitute for you doing your own work.
It’s similarly lazy, presumptuous and unhelpful to criticize the criteria someone else is using. Different people = different criteria.
I agree people should be able to pick based on whatever priorities they have. So criticizing the priorities might be off limits. But how about criticizing the way they evaluate a school in whatever their priorities are?
For example someone might have a # 1 priority of “lively in-class discussions.” Fine. But they evaluate an entire university in that criterion based on sitting in on one class. Shouldn’t they be warned about generalizing based on a sample of one?
Considering the emphasis on these forums about visiting colleges to make a selection, it is likely that many are comfortable relying on small anecdotal samples found on visits. That would very well result in making a selection based on outlier samples if the visitor happens to get outliers.
@moooop I think that the best way to handle that is to have a conversation with a confidant that you trust. “Hey Joe, what are your classes like? Do you have lots of debate or is pretty much a one sided lecture? Are students generally engaged? Is it everybody or usually the same person?” I know I’m a GenXer and today’s generation doesn’t like to have conversations as much, you could probably even do it over text.
I believe that coaches can be great influence, but depending on the level of competition maybe warrants the level of influence. My son is competing in track and field, and he probably went with the less impressive coach because what he was looking for was track to augment his education, education was much more important. However, if he was thinking the D1 highly competitive level I’m sure the influence of the coach would have been far greater.
Every situation is different. Each kid will have his own list of what’s important. Could be (s)he wants his parents to be happy. They want him/her to attend an Ivy League. If that is the case, I don’t want to tell him/her that their priorities are wrong. It’s truly a personal decision.
My kid was happy about having sat in on one class, until the visit where she sat in on four. Now she wants a full day of classes along with a visit.
How about eating a meal at every dining hall on campus, too?
Playing devil’s advocate, it’s also possible this was a student’s shorthand for “I don’t really want to have a long conversation about college with you. I get enough college talk at home. Everyone knows what [unnamed Ivy] is known for. Do I really need to answer that question yet again?”
This Stanford research (https://ed.stanford.edu/news/first-step-choosing-right-college-ignore-rankings-says-stanford-researcher) is titled “The first step to choosing the ‘right’ college? Ignore the rankings”
In case someone insists seeing a ranking, I think it is important to find a ranking which at least has been subject to independent audit by a professional services firm. So which ranking has been audited? The only one I can find is
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/rankings/united-states/2019
There are so many premed threads these days. Please go to https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/ to read Applicants and Matriculants Data. I think most people can get something out of the data. Never blindly trust what people tell you. Data does not lie.
@moooop Oddly enough, she said that food was food, and she’d be fine anywhere! Perceived quality of classes is really the only subjective thing she seems to care about.