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<p>I can’t say about something that didn’t happen but during our visit she along with us didn’t like the New Heaven town and have no aspiration to go back to such a town. Palo Alto is a charm compare to that.</p>
<p>No one likes New Haven. But Yale undergrads don’t suffer from it for the most part.</p>
<p>I don’t know, New Heaven sounds like a pretty nice place to me ;)</p>
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<p>It sounded as a nice place "New Heaven " to us too till we visited and found out that it is “New Haven” but I still stick to New Heaven.</p>
<p>Actually, the more I think about it, the more I realize that Palo Alto and New Haven are not good fits for Stanford and Yale. It really makes you wonder what those institutions were thinking about when they selected those locales. You also have to really wonder if Palo Alto or New Haven carefully considered fit when they accepted those universities. I’m thinking not.</p>
<p>ALF - you are joking, at least in the case of Yale, right? Yale was founded in 1701, 80 years before CT was even a state rather than a colony. It also didn’t actually end up in New Haven until 1718, having moved around a bit in the same general area the previous 17 years. It started as a religious institution, training Congregationalist ministers. I think things might have been just a tad different back then.</p>
<p>ALF rofl</p>
<p>Pretty sure ALF was just being funny!</p>
<p>But wait, do colleges reject students because they don’t think they would be a good personal fit? It seems to me that they would if they could, because such students are likely to be unsuccessful or to transfer. So, for example, will Reed accept a person who is the national chairman of the Youth Right To Life Society and the League to Abolish Affirmative Action? Certainly, there are some colleges that won’t accept you at all if you don’t fit–such as religious colleges that require acceptance of a statement of belief. Smith won’t take you if you’re a man, no matter how much you think you might fit in.</p>
<p>SLUMOM - I sure hope so! You can never tell on here, lol.</p>
<p>Hunt - Your examples are not particularly relevant to the discussion, since A) clearly we are not talking about gender as “fit”; and B) schools that have a religious requirement are very few and it seems bizarre to think that someone that doesn’t believe in that religion would apply in the first place, going back more to the fact that the school is not a fit for that student from the student’s point of view (although obviously the school would feel the same way if it somehow got that far).</p>
<p>To get back to your main point, though, I think that was the point being made earlier. If because of an interview or some other piece of evidence the school felt sure that student, even if they fit academically, would not fit in otherwise they probably would say no. But only the smallest schools tend to be that culturally narrow. Most schools can accommodate a wide variety of students. There are students to whom sports mean very little, yet they are very happy at Michigan or Ohio State or Duke. There are students that really don’t like cold weather, but have had a marvelous time at Bowdoin. All one can do is play the odds, so to speak. Most wouldn’t pick Bowdoin if they prefer warmer weather, but they might value the highest academics they got into over the other factors. After 4 years they still might hate cold weather (perhaps more than ever, lol), but the classes, the peers, and the overall atmosphere could easily outweigh all that. My point being that it would be difficult for most schools to be able to say there is little chance a student wouldn’t do well there, outside of academics, at least in the vast majority of cases. I would hope that even in the Reed example you gave, the school would not disqualify a student based on their politics. I sure won’t say it couldn’t happen, since some schools have proved themselves to be very intolerant of anything “politically incorrect”. But generally, it is easier for the student to identify the feel of a school and decide if they would like it there, but even that is far more art than science.</p>
<p>Well, I was struggling for an example that would be plausible. I don’t think Bowdoin would reject a kid from Hawaii, for example, because they feared he wouldn’t like cold weather.</p>
<p>I guess I need to add some note for those who are irony-challenged, such as, “CAUTION: IRONY AHEAD”.</p>
<p>ALF - well, it isn’t that I am irony challenged, it is more that you would (or maybe you wouldn’t) be amazed at how many would post that being 100% serious. That’s why they invented the emoticons, to clue people in when you are being funny, ironic, sarcastic, whatever.</p>
<p>HUNT - I think that demonstrates the point perfectly. In general one would have to struggle to find an example of why a school would reject a kid based on “fit”, other than getting bad vibes in a personal interview.</p>
<p>Although you do have to wonder if the Collegiate School trustees really gave much thought to fit when they voted to move from Saybrook to New Haven. And, even though New Haven founder, Reverend John Davenport, had his dream fulfilled when the Collegiate School moved, there does not appear to be any record of whether or not he considered other applicants to see if they constituted a better fit.</p>
<p>“It really makes you wonder what those institutions were thinking about when they selected those locales. You also have to really wonder if Palo Alto or New Haven carefully considered fit when they accepted those universities. I’m thinking not”</p>
<p>You haven’t checked the USNWR ranking of the best places, have you? I bet Stanford did.</p>
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I suppose he could also write something in his essays that might cause reservations about admitting him–but it’s hard to draw a line between “fit” and holistic review of qualifications.</p>
<p>These schools would be going against their ideals of diversity if they were rejecting students because they determined he would not be a good “fit” based on an essay. Unless the student made the egregious mistake of saying he wanted to major in something the school doesn’t offer or something along those lines. In that case, the student clearly did not do his research. But if you simply come across as “different” from the average admit, they aren’t just going to reject you because they’re afraid you won’t fit in. They don’t know that and shouldn’t presume they do either. In most cases, they will assume you applied because you believed the school to be somewhere you want to go and will be happy at.</p>
<p>They will reject you if they think your presence will be a net deficit for the school. What might make them think that? If your essays (for example) make you sound like an obnoxious creep, they might reject you even if you have great qualifications. Would that constitute rejecting you because of “fit?” I’m not sure.</p>
<p>Well, that doesn’t count. Any elite college will reject you on that ground. That’s not about school-specific “fit” where Harvard might think you fit in but not Columbia. Of course, most people will have the self-awareness to come across as darlings in their essays and show as much care in choosing the right recommenders.</p>
<p>Agreed. It is hard to imagine saying something like that in an essay that would make a school think “He won’t fit in here, but he would at XYZ”. I mean, if you come across as a spoiled brat, an out-and-out racist, whatever every school will probably think you won’t “fit”. Anything else shouldn’t disqualify you, but I suppose it is subjective at that point and a given adcom might read something in a way that another adcom might not, and certain schools might tend to have adcoms that are a bit more tuned in to that wavelength. Does that happen in real life? Who knows.</p>