My experience is completely opposite, both from the day school and boarding school. The CC are pitching that there are a lot of great schools kids can be happy at, and there is life outside of Ivy league. The kids and families are far more likely to be concerned with the prestige and USNWR rankings. Yes the CC office is judged by college list, but also by satisfaction of the graduating families. And they are well aware that they can’t place everyone at the Ivies.
Also not talked about here at all, but IME the largest component of the final college selection is often the financial package offered by the different schools. Not sure if anyone considers it ‘fit’ on here but the majority of families that cannot afford to write check for the sticker price very much care how much financial aid is offered to them, and whether it comes from grants or loans. So ‘perfect fit’ school is not perfect if it saddles you with huge loans upon graduation, and another school can jump to the top of the list if they offer significant merit aid which will allow you to graduate completely debt-free. And while there are online calculators, you really don’t know what the actually package will look like till you receive it.
@GoatMama Thanks! I border on the thin line between feeling like we are on the right track and feeling completely lost. ?
@417WHB we just had that conversation yesterday and of the 9 schools DS is considering, noted the average debt of each. FA will be huge in this household.
This is also why I like it when BSs publish college acceptances in lieu of college matriculation lists. I feel like they portray a much more accurate picture.
@buuzn03 Hmm… I’ve always been suspect of college acceptance lists because you never know if it was one superstar kid who was accepted to several Ivies and Stanford, or 7 different kids with one acceptance each.
A big portion of the transfer threads fall into one of two categories
A kid didn’t get into his dream school/dream tier of school and feels like he wants to try and transfer to that higher tier.
Kid is unhappy because he can’t seem to make friends so perhaps transferring will solve that issue.
Both of the reasons may not have a lot to do with fit.
@buuzn03 What was most helpful for me was to see where my kid stands academically. It’s hard to get a sense of that when there are no rankings or sharing of grades and tests scores. The summer before senior year, we got two most useful pieces of data from the CC office: (1) % of students at or above your kid’s GPA bracket, and (2) your kid’s % chance of admission to their Far Reach, Reach, and Possible colleges, based on historical data of students with the same academic profile applying to these colleges.
@CaliMex i see your point but the reverse is also true. Matriculation lists only show you where kids ended up, not the numerous Ivies or highly selective colleges they may have turned down for a variety of reasons
Most of the college AO’s that have spoken have told us they don’t consider FOA because there are so many different scales and so much inflation/deflation. (They said some schools have a GOA scale of 13) So they look at. performance of the student (grades) relative to their peers and the rigor of the courses taken. We have heard this from numerous AOs from various college settings (LACs, Public, Private). So I don’t really care about that…except with a system like SCOIR or Naviance, it makes it a bit more difficult because those systems use GPAs for their scattergrams of school placements, etc.
The majority of BSs have steered away from the rank/GPA system, it seems.
SPS doesn’t calculate GPA, and grades are not numeric. There is a corresponding 7-point numeric scale, mostly used for calculating GPA for college applications, along with a conversion to a more traditional 4.5-scale. There is no weighting. If you didn’t know that no student in known history has reached the top of either scale, you would think your kid’s GPA looks sad. Fortunately, (most) colleges do know.
@merc81 Wait, what? Plath, London and and Fitzgerald all died at their own hand. So if to thing own self be true, maybe highlighting other authors would be a better approach for kids looking for a fit.
Just shocked me for a moment when I read your post. Lol.
@buuzn03 You are very lucky he knows what he wants and is so flexible. Goatmama is correct you are well ahead.
@417WHB I think prestige matters more to some parents than others. Also, you can feel the pressure at some schools with many type A parents driving the process. (Was at a multi-school meet yesterday at this type of school for several hours and you could see and feel differences not only among the kids but among their parents). Parents who are Ivy hungry are more likely to send their kid to particular name schools because they think believe there is still a pipeline to the Ivies. Or, they believe that the chance is higher.
So for some parents, USNew matters a lot. And some parents just want to see their kid land in the right place. I know the drive is strong for the name brand (maybe moreso in the Northeast). We felt it when our kid was deciding for 9th grade. So glad kid picked based on fit. Has been a fabulous ride vs. the wildly famous school (which might have turned out fine too). And I agree, $$ factors into most college decisions. There are very few who can pay full cost at BS then college ( and usually for multiple kids).
@417WHB , our school talked about fit to students, parents and anyone who would listen. And I suspect most CC feel like their strong suit is fit. Most kids stayed focused on fit, which includes affordability.
But my counsel is that the CC may be getting pressure from other places, including the school and the type-A parents. Rest assured, they are out there!
So if fit is important, make sure they know that. Your kid will no doubt be one they are happy to work with. I can only imagine how frustrating anything else must be!
@Happytimes2001: The body of my post discussed characters from literature, of whom even the most troubled, Esther Greenwood, recovers. As for the indomitable Buck, I’d be reluctant to associate him with darker aspects at all.
@merc81 Ah, characters, well that’s good because as much as I love Sylvia Plath, Jack London and F. Scott Fitzgerald, their inners lives as authors and people were as tortured as their characters. Whew. I thought you were recommending them as a means to thine own self be true. Yikes.
DS has gotten a lot of guidance from his club coach over the past 1+ year, including his coach having the kids out together lists of 20-30 schools that are within their academic range and in which they have SOME interest. (Apart from recruiting, I wouldn’t feel the need to consider nearly that many schools.) Beyond the obvious of casting a wide net for recruiting purposes, it’s been helpful in forcing us to look beyond the predictable LACs and beyond familiar geography. Some of those non-obvious schools rose to the top of the list once we visited. DS has had clear reactions to most of the schools we’ve visited.
IME most families do consider fit as part of the equation, in the BS or private school world you don’t really have families applying just on prestige to every single Ivy or every school on the T20 USNWR list. But fit on this board is often used to mean look off the beaten path and seek out the less competitive schools. In reality, for some kids Brown, Duke or Princeton are a great fit. As is Harvard for that matter. Within academic and social fit, there is still a range of schools more often than not and your student may have a great experience at any of them.
One thing I will say, although I think this has been a great thread topic, is that the frequent posters on the other side of CC I find to be of a very different mindset than those of us on the BS side.
Many of their threads induce chest pain and I find myself regretting even going over there. The more objective, concrete threads (describe school X, visit days, etc) are ok but the subjective ones are much more difficult for me to read.
I think BS provides a different insight and also a different “want” out of college. Also, the BS application process taught us so much about admissions in general, I feel like we have a step up on those who are brand new to the concept.
I would place a bet that the vast majority of those on the college transfer threads came from home and of those, the majority came from public schools without the resources to provide tailored college counseling.
It occurs to me that I was one of those kids who transferred to a different college (as you’ve described, @buuzn03), though in a unique manner as I transferred to my junior year abroad university. However, my desire to transfer was due largely to general dissatisfaction with my prestigious LAC to which I had applied as part of a college search that had no rhyme or reason, just vanity and teenage know-it-all-ness. DS is a 180-degree different student (and person) than I was but also far more self-aware and tuned in to things such as “fit” or “vibe.” Plus he doesn’t care about a picturesque, NE college setting as I did; he’s basically got that now and can move on to the real world.
@CTMom21 I also transferred senior year, but it was due to a change of major and the college I was at didn’t offer the senior electives I needed but every other spring semester. So, I transferred to a much larger school to make it out in 4 years. Had I not changed majors after sophomore year, I would’ve stayed where I was.
But I was also CLUELESS when it came to college. Plus, my parents sent me where my siblings went and my sister was starting grad school as they felt I was too young to go anywhere else on my own.