<p>@lookingforward - regarding small-talk in med school, it would only work to teach it in training if there were a causative effect with care (and only a positive one, at that 
) - it seems like the question was about correlation, right? So seeing who ānaturallyā does small-talk would be more usefulā¦</p>
<p>QM- you call it doggedness, I call it to Perseverate, and if I knew you in real life I might think you had a psychological disorder.</p>
<p>Yes, there is no question that universities (not yours, apparently, but some) understand what āfitā is in their own context. Kids donāt just get randomly āpluckedā to become Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright scholars- universities invest time and money (they pay professionals) to guide their top students through the selection process. Kids ARE randomly selected (in the sense that they do not and cannot apply) for membership in Phi Beta Kappa and other honor societies, and universities therefore know what their top echelon of students looks like and who they are- year after year. Universities (again, not yours) also know who populates the āhappy bottomā of the class- whether itās the Gentleman Cās, or the kids who are so busy being activists and leaders of organizations and what-not that grades take back seat. Universities have a wealth of data about their ROTC population- who starts, who finishes, who canāt finish the program and why. Universities track starting salaries by major and by degree; universities know who has a job 9 months after graduation and who is in grad school; who has begun to contribute to the alumni fund by their 5th reunion (a very important statistic which is tracked and segmented to a fare thee well) and who has not. And most obviously- universities know who gets into Med School (and with what grades, MCAT scores) and who does not; who gets into Law school, etc.</p>
<p>You are so data obsessed that you are missing the larger picture- universities donāt need to know that a red haired girl from Omaha who plays the flute and won a dollhouse building contest will make friends, join clubs, leave her mark on their university and therefore they should accept her. But they have a wealth of data that shows who comprises the top tier (and bottom tier) of their student body measured a bunch of different ways- giving back after graduating, volunteering for alumni committees, winning Rhodes scholarships, running for Congress at age 35, etc. And so when they practice holistic admissions, they are looking for a balanced portfolio of the kinds of students where history (and data) suggests the students will be successful going forward.</p>
<p>OK? You are clearly smart. What is so hard about this concept???</p>
<p>And it clearly goes beyond grades and choice of major. A school like MIT (Iām picking it because you seem interested in it) gives students VERY granular information about grad and professional school admissions. My own kid got a wonderful analysis from some counselor there which not only showed the typical 'hereās who gets in to this university and hereās who doesnāt" but also showed who comprised both ends of the tail- who are the outliers, and what can be learned from their experience.</p>
<p>Presumably an MIT senior knows enough about statistics to be able to interpret the data in an appropriate manner. </p>
<p>I meant, during training, tackle a misplaced urge to do smalltalk that goes off-topic, that interferes. Train them to stay focused, even if there is some warm-up. Interpersonal skills are big in med school training, today. </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>Texaspg: Iām not exactly sure how you meant that post. I understand colleges canāt really care that a student sees the school as a fit. However, if parents believe a kid claiming a college to be a FIT is totally irrelevant then in my mind the college admissions strategizing has jumped the shark. Maybe we arenāt as bad as Tiger Mom but how different are we? </p>
<p>This idea of admissions identifying potential Rhodes, Marshalls, Fulbrights is absolutely an interesting new slant on the discussion. Thanks blossom! And I think they may want potentially different types of āfitā when they think about each scholarship. Thinking about this, how colleges define the success of their graduates is important. Is there a scale of what they are looking for? How important is ability and willingness to make significant alum donations? Will admissions be weighted towards that sort of candidate? Is fit about students wanting schools that provide opportunities for a rather limited definition of success and then with that success enriching their alma maters?</p>
<p>Also, itās interesting to think what sort of statistical analysis has been done previously by colleges about students and what will be possible in the future.</p>
<p>Already, I suggested big data analysis of these threads to unlock the meaning of life. Iām only sort of kidding here.
okay - my stream of consciousness exercise of the day.</p>
<p>adding:
except I still do think how they identify poets would be an interesting discussion</p>
<p>
It clearly didnāt matter to Harvard at all. And when he went to accepted students weekend he discovered he liked Harvard a lot more than he expected to, though he still ended up choosing a more techie place. Iād asked him to apply because I did think he had better odds than most to get in, and he might want to choose it over his safeties. Iām pretty skeptical about yield protection and all the rest, but at the lottery schools I donāt think they care if you are the first choice - they know if you apply to H, you may well also being applying to Y, P, M or S or even Caltech. </p>
<p>ALH- itās not a scale. Itās a balanced portfolio.</p>
<p>I know at the universities my company recruits for, weāve got a wealth of statistics from them on the student body. We know what percentage have gone to Teach For America over the last few years, what their majors were, what their GPAās were, what activities they were involved in while on campus. We know what percentage end up in grad school after 9 months (i.e. the year in which they graduate), 3 years, 5 years. Etc. I have seen data out of university development offices that slices up the student body post-grad in some very interesting ways- does involvement in a sport (varsity, club, or just ācasual with friendsā) mean greater involvement/engagement post-grad or not? (measured not just by frequency and size of donationsā¦ do these former athletes volunteer for reunion committees? Do they mentor potential attendees from under-served or disadvantaged communities? Do they attend reunions or volunteer to host āmeet and greetsā in their own cities?). What happens to the editor in chief of their campus newspapers? On some colleges, this is a role for a journalism/mass communications major. At a place like Harvard (which has neither of these majors) it is a significant notch on the resume for either a career in politics or corporate life.</p>
<p>This is one of the reasons that the efforts to game the system by coming up with an algorithm is so absurd. SOME of your entering freshman will be athletes. SOME of them will be poets. SOME of them will become president of the political union, and SOME of them will be editors of your newspaper. Not all- just some. If the adcomās do it right (again, not with 100% accuracy- Iām sure thereās a university orchestra somewhere in America right now in need of a tuba player) then over time, the student body does its four years in situ, and then leaves and does all the fabulous things that graduates of that university are expected/hoped to do. Sometimes the wannabe engineer enters and becomes an ethnomusicologist- fantastic. HS kids are supposed to be exposed to the big world once they get to college. Sometimes the political science major switches gears and becomes an art historian- another great outcome. But the university doesnāt need to āguessā as to who will āfitā. </p>
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<p>This quote matches what I am stating. A student applies to a college believing that is the right college for them (among 10 or 15 other colleges which hopefully cover reaches, matches and safeties). The safeties and some matches might reciprocate that view but expecting reaches to agree with the studentās opinion of a FIT is not a valid expectation. The reach schools will decide whether the student is a FIT, not the student.</p>
<p>The studentās job is to persuade the reach school that it is a good fitāand in that effort, the student should focus on what he would have to contribute to the school, and not the other way around so much.</p>
<p>"There is a great deal of overlap, but Tufts has a specific mission which I think comes out of itās history of being founded by Unitarians. They talk a lot about Global Citizenship. "</p>
<p>In this thread, linked below, I tried to give my gut impressions of students and institutional values (which are two entirely different things) of a dozen or so schools we visited, and here is what I had said about Tufts:
āTUFTS. Students: Intense. Values: Global justice, making an impact.ā</p>
<p><a href=ā8 Colleges in 4 Days: How I Spent My Spring Break - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forumsā>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/901466-8-colleges-in-4-days-how-i-spent-my-spring-break-p1.html</a></p>
<p>This is what we mean by gut, intuition, fit. There was no specific data point of X% of Tufts students do y% in the field of global citizenship justice, but it just came through authentically. Itās data like this which is what people use to assess fit, and likely what adcoms use as well. </p>
<p>"When an academically well-qualified student is rejected from a college, this is sometimes attributed to a lack of āfitā of the student to the college, as assessed by admissions. I still get back to the question of what exactly is meant by āfitā?</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>QuantMech. Youāre trying to data-ize intuition, gut and feelings. This is like saying - Iām looking for a boyfriend, I know 20 different guys who might āapplyā for the position, now John and I are dating. (I guess George C didnāt apply.) What were the quantitative criteria in which I assessed John would be the best fit for me? Do you think I sat there and created a spreadsheet and rated guys on the color of their eyes, color of their hair, perceived IQ, earning capability, rating of sense of humor on a scale of 1 - 10? </p>
<p>Or do you think that, while I might have general preferences, I just did a holistic assessment and there was a spark there?</p>
<p>This is the EXACT SAME THING. I have to believe youāve fallen in love in one point in your life. Did you look at data? (Actually, I suspect there are some on CC who likely did, sigh.)</p>
<p>Another analogy might be hiring somebody to work in the office with you. You can eliminate a lot of people who donāt have the necessary qualifications, but once you start interviewing, more subjective factors become very importantālike whether youād actually enjoy working with this person on a daily basis, and whether the person seems like a team player or not. And if you were hiring five or ten people to work on a team, it would get even more complicatedābut still pretty subjective.</p>
<p>*Texaspg: āA kid claiming a college to be FIT is totally irrelevant to colleges when their admit rates start dropping below 30%.ā </p>
<p>Alh: āTexaspg: Iām not exactly sure how you meant that post. I understand colleges canāt really care that a student sees the school as a fit. However, if parents believe a kid claiming a college to be a FIT is totally irrelevant then in my mind the college admissions strategizing has jumped the shark. Maybe we arenāt as bad as Tiger Mom but how different are we?ā *</p>
<p>Alh, Texaspg meant that statement exactly as he said it. The colleges that have the pick of the litter, who have more qualified students than they could possibly admit, donāt care that the STUDENT thinks the college would be perfect for them. Nor should they. After all, all 30,000 applicants to Harvard are convinced they are the perfect fit and they, alone, would make the very bestest use of Harvardās resources and their lives would be practically perfect if they were admitted. Why should Harvard care?</p>
<p>That is a complete differently concept from a parent taking seriously his / her childās contention that certain colleges would be a good fit TO APPLY TO. I had this with one of my kids - my son. </p>
<p>For a variety of reasons not germane here, H and I thought he would be absolutely perfect at (insert top 10 LAC). We went to visit. The visit was disappointing and he just didnāt feel at home. I actually flew him back again for another visit with his grandfather who lives nearby because we thought - oh, maybe he needs to give this place another choice. Guess what. His gut told him this wasnāt a place for him to apply. We listened to that. We didnāt initially want him applying to our alma mater because we wanted him to do his own thing and not just walk in our (metaphorical) footsteps. He had a gut feeling that he did belong there and we honored that and let him apply (āletā is not the right word, but you know what I mean). Of course HIS perceptions of HIS fit were important in his crafting HIS list. But itās irrelevant from the collegeās point of view. </p>
<p>Iām not sure why youāre mixing up these 2 concepts. </p>
<p>Thank you, Hunt. </p>
<p>lookingforward, if you did not talk about Academic Assessment, as you say in #1434, what did you mean by the post that started out āAnd 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 āteachableā to a particular level, given the instructional capabilities of the institution.ā It was post #1397.</p>
<p>Also, thanks collegealum314. I do try to avoid making āstupid points.ā :)</p>
<p>āAnd 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 āteachableā to a particular level, given the instructional capabilities of the institution.ā It was post #1397"</p>
<p>Sheās saying that Academic Assessment looks to see what a student has to have to be āteachable.ā Meaning ā¦ if we find (for example) kids who havenāt taken calculus get poorer grades in X science class, then maybe we institute.having calculus as a prerequisite for that class. Or if we find that kids with an ACT below X tend to graduate with a sub-2.0 GPA, we raise our ACT requirements. This has nothing to do with admissions fit. </p>
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<p>I thought I had better intervene. Blossom looked about ready to institutionalize youā¦</p>
<p>Right, and lookingforward said that she ādidnāt talk about Academic Assessment.ā </p>
<p>collegealum #1437 understood what I have been asking aboutāis there an assessment later on, to see whether the predictions of admissions were borne out in fact, or not. At a number of schools, there is a need for studies to determine what the academic cut-off is, where a student is likely to be successful independently, or need a lot of supportāand they run the studies to determine that.</p>
<p>At the ātopā schools, they donāt really need to do thisāthey have an over-supply of applicants who are very well qualified academically and will be essentially certain to graduate. If they are looking to see where the lowest acceptable academic cut-off is, there is a reason for that.</p>
<p>I didnāt allege that any invasion of privacy actually occurs, but I thought the schools could not have the type of information that some have claimed that they have, without it.</p>
<p>Also, do you mean to say that Harvard grooms students to become Rhodes Scholars? I am shocked! Shocked! And appalled! [Casablanca reference]</p>
<p>Itās very interesting that giving back after graduation is important to the schools . . .well, I mean, of course it is in the larger sense. But at 5 years out? I will need to lend QMP some money.</p>
<p>Lol, collegealum314, #1455āluckily there is not a chance of that. I have been busy with administrivia today, and needed to let off some steam.</p>