<p>Based on the letters I have seen from colleges, all state schools claim they are the best fit for high stat kids and promise thriving environments while all lottery schools request them to apply but promise nothing in return.</p>
<p>A kid claiming a college to be FIT is totally irrelevant to colleges when their admit rates start dropping below 30%</p>
<p>The idea that students could assess their âfitâ better than the colleges was just my second thought about the comment, âItâs all about fit!â While I still think there is an element of truth in that, I am trying to refine my understanding of âfitâ and its use.</p>
<p>Different posters seem to have different ideas about what âfitâ means and whether it is a consideration in admissions or not. Both Hunt and lookingforward seem to me to be saying that âfitâ is tracked by data and observation after enrollment, but I might be mis-reading their posts. </p>
<p>It seems to me that âfitâ with the rest of the class could be a legitimate use of the term âfit,â though it is not exactly what everyone means by âfit.â If thatâs what âfitâ is, then there is a question about how the structure of the class gets started: Which students wind up setting the puzzle pattern, into which the other applicants need to âfitâ?</p>
<p>apprenticeprof mentioned the example of Princeton and âgreen-haired people,â which I have also read about. This seems like an anti-fit with the Princeton stereotype, but it is (or was) a âfitâ with Presidential priorities at Princeton. Still, if a lot of green-haired students were encouraged to apply, then who exactly sets the template into which a subset of the green-haired people âfitâ?</p>
<p>It is IRRELEVENT what students think about their personal fit at a lottery college. It does not get them admitted.</p>
<p>So convoluted. Always the need for more and more detailed explanations.
We did not say fit is tracked by data. Hunt said: âThe college has years and years of data and observations about what kinds of students fit wellâ Ponder the difference and why the morph.
If you get it for Bama and Reed, why not in general? Why the hyperfocus and repeated calls on Hunt?</p>
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<p>Possibly those who are able to wear a formal suit a few times a week, pretend to enjoy themselves at a formal stuffy cotillion, will at least humor Old Nassau to at least play some refined jazz with that electric twanger rather than the noise known as punk rock/pop punk, know their way across convolutedly complex table etiquette/dining utensils, and actually master a peculiar faux posh British accent unique to the elite tigers. </p>
<p>WellâŠcollege lore has it the dining clubs and their fine provisions and spirits are a great draw.</p>
<p>:D</p>
<p>As banal as the original post was, I feel sorry for the poster who started it, and who disappeared from this thread a month ago. The thread was hijacked and jumped the shark a long time ago.</p>
<p>QM, when a student decides heâd prefer MIT or Caltech or CMU over Northwestern or Duke or Stanford, part of what heâs reacting to is a GUT judgment - I prefer this atmosphere over that. Itâs not something he derives from statistics - itâs an intuitive judgment about the feel of these campuses and how he might personally fit. Itâs derived impressionistically - through how these places talk about themselves, the feel of the campus, the impressions of students he meets on tours, etc. This is data too. </p>
<p>If you get this, why is it so difficult to flip this around and know that an adcom could assess fit? </p>
<p>I mean, I know what sort of people will thrive in my company culture and which ones wonât. But itâs not data based. Itâs based on intuition and felt knowledge. </p>
<p>You are NF, so you have a bunch of felt knowledge yourself - more than us NTs for that matter. </p>
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It may not get them in directly, but itâs sometimes itâs very important sometimes not so much. Unless one wants to apply to all the lottery colleges you should pick and choose what makes sense. That said, sometimes it helps to go against stereotype. The year my CS kid applied to Harvard they were expanding the engineering school. They were wooing him and he got a call from the head of the CS department there. They didnât care about his view of fit at all - he told them he liked MIT better at the interview. I think Harvard saw him as a good fit because heâs independent, confident, a potential leader in his field and had the grades and stats they look for. While we think of him as somewhat anti-social he actually was involved in a couple of activities at his high school that require at least some ability to play with others. Every teacher he ever had always talked about his great sense of humor. So I think Hâs notion of fit is a bit different than the kids who go all starry eyed at prestige. They are looking for leaders in their fields.</p>
<p>Tufts, which is a bit further down on the food chain, (17.4% admitted last year), talks a lot more about fit. Most people think of it as a Harvard reject school looking for the same types of kids. There is a great deal of overlap, but Tufts has a specific mission which I think comes out of itâs history of being founded by Unitarians. They talk a lot about Global Citizenship. That doesnât mean you have to say you are going to study IR and sit in on classes at the Fletcher School, but you will probably get Brownie points if you show you care about the world now. Iâll add that like the kids who talk about the open curriculum at Brown and donât get the point, Iâd tread warily with how you deal with the Tufts application. Just be aware itâs not a mini-Harvard and read their website carefully. My sonâs why-Tufts essay was very silly, because he figured theyâd be sick to death of the I want to study IR at Tufts responses.</p>
<p>I have to respectfully disagree with the part of jym626âs post that says that the thread âjumped the shark,â unless itâs possible that it jumped back.</p>
<p>I apologize in advance for my doggednessâit is simultaneously one of my best and one of my worst qualities.</p>
<p>However, something new has seemed to emerge from the most recent discussion in this thread, and I would really like to know what the back story on it is.</p>
<p>In post #1375, Hunt wrote:
The college has years and years of data and observations about what kinds of students fit well (assuming they actually care about this).</p>
<p>In post #1396, lookingforward wrote:
The whole freaking Inst Res dept is looking at what is, what isnât, what works and what doesnât.</p>
<p>This gives me the impression that the evaluation of âfitâ by the admissions staff is based on some data analysis. If what I understand by âfitâ is being assessed, then I think the data must go beyond high-school GPA and SAT/ACT scores. But I am extremely curious what the additional data and âobservationsâ are. I think this is a legitimate question, based on those posts.</p>
<p>In post #1397, lookingforward wrote:</p>
<p>âAnd the whole freaking Academic Assessment dept is looking at every single major, degree, school, certificate, and credential to evaluate what set of characteristics must a student have to be âteachableâ to a particular level, given the instructional capabilities of the institution. Which is why an âopen enrollmentâ type college will be able to admit a kid who needs 11th grade math remediation or 10th grade language arts tutoring, and why Princeton will not. It doesnât mean that Princetonâs professors canât teach algebra, or wonât run a section of its Freshman Lit class on âTo Kill a Mockingbirdâ. But they know what a student needs to have walking in the door in order to be able to graduate in four years with a Bachelorâs degree.â</p>
<p>I have no real problem with this. But for the âtopâ universities, I donât understand the purpose of this. At my university, we need to have a rough prediction of the numbers of students who may not return for their sophomore years, or who may not graduate within 6 years. I donât think the âtopâ schools need this, to assess âfit.â</p>
<p>At any rate, when people have posted, âItâs all about fit!â I donât think they mean the institution ran the numbers and concluded that the students were academically qualified to have high odds of graduation.</p>
<p>I donât think that a studentâs assessment of âfitâ should count for anything in university admissions.</p>
<p>When an academically well-qualified student is rejected from a college, this is sometimes attributed to a lack of âfitâ of the student to the college, as assessed by admissions. I still get back to the question of what exactly is meant by âfitâ?</p>
<p>I suppose one could adopt the Supreme Court standard of being unable to define it, but recognizing it when one sees it.</p>
<p>@mathmom - Your son wanted to go to MIT, he did not care about Harvard, did his opinion about either school matter?</p>
<p>The schools choose the student they want. The student can choose not to apply if they donât feel a fit but they canât force a positive outcome from the school by applying.</p>
<p>Oh, QM. You really donât understand all this?
Hunt, again?<br>
Who do you think single digit college adcoms are and what do you think they do? They know their schools, goals, admins, programs, opportunities, contexts, whoâs doing what- and, wow, their students (now and over time.) They know the college self-image and what makes that campus vibrant. They know the unique positives and challenges. And they look for kids who will âfit.â And âthrive.â</p>
<p>No data crunching needed. No parsing our words is needed. No âbut you saidâ or âbut you said.â Youâre fixated. I think you must like it. </p>
<p>Brown and Tufts are great examples- as are Columbia vs Dartmouth, Different places with different flairs, different realities, different contexts, different resources and more. Sure, they all have classes and requirements of some sort and stats for matriculated kids and grad rates, etc. </p>
<p>What kind of kid do you think fits at Chi? What do you think Chi looks for? This isnât some science project where you can guess height from foot size. What sort of kid would you recommend look at Chi? </p>
<p>Of course weâve jumped off track. Again. How much longer on QM doesnât get âfitâ and Hunt and I said something or other?</p>
<p>Now, you could take my remark that they know whoâs doing what and parse that, too. âWhat do you mean? They know John is in the library and Susie jogs? The topic Dr Smith is lecturing on today? That sounds like a privacy issue, how do they learn this? Outside observers, self-reporting, snitches? IR?â Donât blow things up.</p>
<p>Speaking of fit, the Tufts admissions officers threw in some nuggets about fit couple of years ago but the one about institutional needs that stuck in my mind. </p>
<p>It went along the lines of âAll institutional need driven admissions are a fit. If someone applies and there is a relationship established between their last name and the name of a well known building on campus, it is a fit; if a member of the board of regents says his grand niece is applying, it is a fit; development admits are a fit.â</p>
<p>I didnât talk about Academic Assessment. When you go back, look for the flow in what each of us says. We will not be coming up with a model to lean on. Period. Itâs just a discussion, not a PhD thesis. None of this really saves the world.</p>
<p>Legacy isnât a guarantee anymore. It depends.
The more a kid knows about a college, the better she can then sit back and process that, the better she can express herself in her apps. It seems many kids donât dig that way. So sure, it seems random.</p>
<p>You canât force the final outcome, but you sure can get yourself further in consideration. </p>
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I had to look back at the post to see what I actually claimed. I donât know what colleges actually collect, but if they care about fit, they certainly can collect information. One kind of information would be things like the GPA and graduation rates of people with different SAT scores, etc. Thatâs not really fit, though. What I had in mind is the kind of feedback I would look for if I ran an admissions department. How do kids from this or that private school or public magnet do here? Do people without many high school ECs blossom, or not? How do international students blend in? Do students from low-income families do well, and what kind of support do they need? Do students tend to go into the majors they identified on their applications or not? How can we characterize students who drop out, or who transfer? In addition, Iâd want to have plenty of information about institutional needs. Are we looking for more Classics majors? Do we need more woodwind players? Have we had trouble recruiting people from rural areas, or certain areas of the country, or particular underserved groups?</p>
<p>I think the bottom line here is that there is no algorithm at colleges that use holistic admissions. There are procedures, but they are not precise. They are very subjective. They change all the time, based on human perceptions and changing needs. Iâve observed again and again on CC that this is a concept that is foreign to many people, but thatâs just how it is.</p>
<p>Added: so hereâs the little known tip for getting in: there arenât any. Do your very best at the things you do, educate yourself on the (well known) procedures for putting together your applications, do your homework on what different colleges are like, and you will get into colleges that will work well for you.</p>
<p>Wow, it has been an active thread! As proof that I really am a HS teacher, I have been totally swamped and unable to play on CC for a while, and that will continue for at least a few weeks here. 
But I did force myself to at least skim everything written in these pages.</p>
<p>Regarding âfitâ - I think the reality, which is uncomfortable to many people, for disparate reasons, is that âfitâ is sort of a popularity contest. Not necessarily with the negative connotations that often go along with that term - but rather, the adcoms judge the person (from the application; I seriously doubt any effort goes into spying or other allegations Iâve read). Much like Clooney and his potential gf - the selective colleges really have their pick (though not 100%, which gets into the yield question).</p>
<p>The adcoms are judging how much the institution âlikesâ the candidate, based on objective and subjective criteria. âFitâ is another way of saying, âwe liked so-and-so and thought s/he would be a good addition to our campusâ. By the way, this is one reason that teachers ought to comment in LOR about what kind of [good] person the candidate would be on a campus for four years, in detail.</p>
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<p>I think QMâs question is whether there is some after-the-fact verification, holistic or otherwise, that certain characteristics X selected for based on certain aspects of the application actually result in desired behaviors and/or actions Y on campus when the student matriculates. My guess is the only feedback they are likely to have are ones about grades and choice-of-major. </p>
<p>Itâs not a stupid point. I remember reading a study which tested whether doctors who engaged in a lot of smalltalk with their patients provided better care. The assumption was that smalltalk would correlate to bedside manner, making the patients feel comfortable, and thereby the patients may be more likely to share details about their condition to the doctor. The result was the oppositeâdoctors who engaged in smalltalk provided worse care. Undoubtedly, this sort of intuitive assumption had guided medical school admissions. </p>
<p>Donât know how you could judge smalltalk for med school admissions. But you can tackle it in the training. </p>
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<p>I suspect the study was sponsored by American Association of Surgeons. :p</p>
<p>AAMC redesigned MCAT to place more emphasis on behavioral sciences which canât be applied by a physician unless it is used in conversations with a patient. Whether it starts with small talk or not, it requires a rapport with the patient.</p>
<p><a href=âhttps://www.aamc.org/students/download/282490/data/mcat2015psb.pdfâ>https://www.aamc.org/students/download/282490/data/mcat2015psb.pdf</a></p>