How commonly is college brand/prestige/selectivity an important "fit" factor?

Parents Forum
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This is crowd sourcing. Different t people have different perspectives. Gives people things to think about.

If we had group think, you wouldn’t need a website. You could have an algorithm throw out the group answer.

To me, hearing various perspectives can only help an applicant see things from different angles….even if the poster doesn’t have direct experience. They’ve still lived life.

We all tho k we are more right than not - but we are guiding people we don’t know.

And all of us can’t be right -or more likely all of us likely add value in our own way and I wish more would respect that.

I think most OPs do.

That’s who we are here for. Not the 10 or 20 regular posters. Or that’s who we should be here for.

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Crowdsourcing is great. I’m just responding to the comment that nobody pushes back on a kid who is interested in creative writing and is applying to Emory, Yale and Iowa. In fact, there’s LOTS of pushback on that poor kid. And “guiding people we don’t know”-- I agree 100%. Which is why telling a kid that their list stinks and their academic interests are either stupid or will lead to a life of penury is really mean.

Everyone in America can’t major in CS or Mechanical engineering or nursing. And respecting a kids academic interests to me seems pretty basic. And yes- lots and lots of pushback on a kid whose interests are not pre-professional or ARE pre-professional (creative writing, filmmaking, dance, music performance, screenwriting) but are perceived by CC’'ers to be “waste of time” majors.

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Oh, they’ll get criticized, but not for selection Very Different Universities. You may be correct, though, that out memories are playing tricks on us.

I also think that, once affordability becomes an important factor, fit takes a backseat. Indeed, for most people in the USA, affordability is the #1 factor in deciding which college to attend. So if a person provides a list of multiple colleges and talks about which is more affordable, people won’t be talking about how these colleges are very different in many ways.

If this is the case, AND affordability isn’t the primary criterion, yes, people do bring up the differences between the colleges. A person who has no financial limitations, and has Iowa State, MSU, Lawrence College, and WPI on their list will get the exact same comments as somebody who wants to apply to “all the Ivies”.

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I agree with you that CC often fetishizes random statistics and elide them with “fit”.

A kid who wants to major in archaeology really, really, really doesn’t need to worry about the size of the university. Other than a “statistical methods for social scientists” lecture which is likely a requirement for 10 different majors, the classes are going to be small. The labs are going to be small. The kid is going to know every single faculty member by junior year. So sure- the first year bio classes are enormous with every single pre-med wannabee… but “Methods in carbon dating in desert regions” which is the second course in the sequence after the methods class focusing on bogs/marshland/maritime carbon dating… too big?

So yeah, fit is important after finances. But many things go into “fit”, and looking at 900 person lectures and deciding “not a fit” is likely not a productive way of slicing the bologna.

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You say this like it is a bad thing. If the parents are writing the checks to pay for everything, there is nothing wrong with the parents’ requirements mattering a great deal.

An example, we lived in Florida when my kids were in Middle & High School. We had done the college prepaid program and both of my kids had some type of Bright Futures scholarship. The only state schools I would allow them to consider outside of Florida schools were UCLA and UC Berkeley. For their majors, and where they wanted to live after graduation, I felt those schools were worth the additional cost. There was also a small number of private universities that I felt were worth the additional cost. I limited them to any state school in Florida, UCLA, UCB and a small collection of private universities. This limitation was driven strictly by money and the potential benefits of attending certain highly selective schools.

Whether it is politics, sports or higher education, the extremists on either side of an argument are usually wrong. To say that it is impossible to be a success without attending one of the 15 or so most selective universities is just ridiculous. It is equally ridiculous to say that it is 100% the student, and there are no potential benefits to attending a highly selective institution. I think, more often than not, parents more than students are aware of those benefits, and accordingly guide their children. This isn’t a bad thing.

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86

You need to get people not on CC to answer this question.:laughing:

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87

Emphasis added.

One of the common threads through American culture has been the idea of the American Dream. That Sean/Susan can be born in poverty and by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps they can achieve success and influence. If people believe that success and influence only comes from attending a school filled by the top 2%, then much of that American dream crumbles. For the dream to remain alive, people need to believe that they can reach success & influence via means that are open to much larger segments of the population and that they see others who have done that. And they need folks from the top 2% to show up in the milieux that are available to the masses, too.

Additionally, the harder it becomes for people to realize the American Dream, the more important it is for there to be greater social cohesion. When folks espouse an Ivy of bust or Top X or bust mentality, the indirect message is that anything less is subpar. And if folks feel that they can’t ever make it into the top 2% and that much of the top 2% thinks disdainfully of them and their education…well, my history classes taught me that it doesn’t tend to end well.

To be clear, there are many folks who attend(ed) Top X schools who do not have a disdainful attitude toward non-Top X schools. Of the students/alums I’ve met, certainly the majority of them fall into the non-disdainful bucket. But I suspect that the more of the Top X or bust thinking individuals fill up the top schools and alumni rolls, the more cause for concern I have about the future of our country.

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88

Speaking just for myself, when I see a kid that has certain sorts of colleges well-represented among their Reaches (usually midsize private research universities, sometimes private LACs), but not among their Likelies or Targets (if they have Targets at all, as sometimes the list is basically all Reaches and maybe one or two large in-state publics), I will usually point that out, and ask if they would be interested in suggestions for Likelies and Targets that are more similar to some of their Reaches. If the kid has good numbers, I will also tend to mention some of those suggestions might offer significant merit, and possibly some could even be competitive with their in-state options on cost.

This is not so much intended as a criticism of the existing Likelies/Targets, as trying to help the kid understand that good numbers can be used in more ways that trying to pursue famous colleges with low acceptance rates. They can also potentially be used to find colleges that would be particularly good fits for them, and again might offer merit.

But again, to me this underscores how fit as I use the term is in fact an alternative to things like generic rankings, the pursuit of bragging rights, and so on. Like if a Target or Likely substantively has many of the same virtues as some Reach a kid is applying to, but the kid will not consider that college because their peers, their parents, their parents’ peers, or so on do not know that college and would not be impressed by its US News ranking, then to me that is rejecting the pursuit of what I would call fit, not embracing it.

And I do have a hope that thinking about their possible Likelies and Targets in these terms will help them refine their thinking about Reaches. Again, it is not that I think it is inherently bad to go to a famous college with a low acceptance rate. But if that is the only reason you are choosing it, it might well not end up as good a college experience as you could have had. And in some circumstances, it might also avoidably limit, not expand, your options for further education and career.

And like others here, I think a more “bottom up” approach can really end up rewarding. Cost allowing, it you have a lot of potential Likelies and Targets, then you will need to reflect on how to choose. And yes, it might strip out US News rankings, fame among peers, and so on as useful criteria, but that means you can think freely about other things that might matter to you, academically and non-academically.

And then when you get to Reaches, it is not a matter of avoiding famous colleges, but you hopefully can now see them as better or worse fits in light of these others factors, and make sure you are focusing on the ones that are better fits.

And I in fact believe that ultimately makes for better college applications too. Like when you are asked some form of “why us?” in an essay, you can give an answer that they see as well-informed and consistent with their own values.

And then kids get offers, and I think kids who have followed this sort of process do not in fact always then choose the highest-ranked, most famous, most selective college that gives them an offer. Sometimes they do, which again is not inherently bad. But sometimes they choose a college that gives them a great merit offer, or which has a special academic program they particularly like, or that just really felt like a place they would be happy.

And after a few years now engaged in this world, I have seen that sort of process work out well for a lot of kids. And so that is why I encourage kids I encounter here to consider following such a path.

But if they are unwilling, or if their parents basically won’t let them, or so on, then that is that. I just think it is good for kids and parents to at least know that way of approaching college choice is available for them to consider.

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89

One issue here is that midsize privates tend to be less transparent than big publics in many states, so estimating them as likely or (assured) safety may not be possible, especially if they tend to reject “overqualified” applicants for yield protection.

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I respect your approach. I’ll just give you context on “their parents basically won’t let them” from my side of the discussion.

High stats kid. We were full pay, and not because we’d inherited Daddy’s trust. We started saving and planning literally from the time we got married for our eventual (we hoped) children’s education. Kids first meeting with the GC and came home with a robust list of “target type” colleges, plus an appropriate short list of reaches. I nixed the list. As far as I was concerned (and spouse agreed) there was a public flagship where the kid was an auto-admit, had a fine engineering school with a solid reputation among employers, and had significant resources in terms of labs, inter-disciplinary collaborations, funding, etc. And in many cases- BETTER resources than the “target” type schools.

I explained to kid- I was happy to pay for more. More rigor. More of everything academically and intellectually rich. I was not happy to pay for less- we’d be full pay everywhere.

So kid took the shot at the reaches, with a rock solid safety. That’s it.

I just did not see the value in a program which had less than a large flagship where the kid was an auto-admit, even if there was merit to bring the price down somewhat. You may disagree, and that’s fine. GC disagreed but said that of course it was our money and nobody could tell us how to spend it.

Just because kid ended up at “famous U” didn’t mean that “famous U” was the goal. MORE was the goal (from our perspective). And it paid off. For every friend that complains that their kid can’t get a spot on a research team because the grad students hog the opportunities, our kid was reporting that professors were asking after every class “if you are interested in joining up on my ABC team, see me after class” and the database of undergrad research opportunities was chock-a-block of postings- many of which could not get filled. For every friend complaining that their kid was just a number, our kid was being escorted on a summer fellowship by a professor and a grad student who were in charge of making sure that every student on the exchange program was being challenged and not just collating documents. And for every kid spending winter break playing online poker and sleeping all day on the parents couch, our kid had to hustle back to campus for the amazing opportunities in January.

So that’s why you get irritated sometimes with posters who say “my parents won’t let me”. If you are affluent enough not to care about college costs- that’s a different story. But for people who have carefully plotted out how to pay for college-- and have a kid with the energy and work ethic and passion to benefit from a “resource rich” environment, there just isn’t a lot of logic in many of the “match schools” folks on CC like to suggest to the high stats kids.

For me? State flagship. Big, bureaucratic, but chockablock with the kind of intellectual challenges available at the “famous U’s”. Can’t roll a bowling ball down a lab without hitting someone doing cutting edge, well financed work.

Just to give you the other side of the “famous U or bust” story.

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91

So typically I would suggest starting with these definitions:

https://support.collegekickstart.com/hc/en-us/articles/217485088-Differences-Between-Likely-Target-Reach-and-Unlikely-Schools

Per those definitions:

  • Likely: the admit rate is over 50% and your academic profile puts you in the top quartile of students from the previous year. These are schools where you have a high probability of gaining admission and merit aid, and it’s ideal to have at least two in your list.

I think it is important to note that to the extent you can get information specific to your type of applicant, specific schools, programs, or majors with first-year admissions, and so on, that is the information you should be using. Like a college could be a Likely for a domestic student, not a high need International, or for their Arts & Sciences college, but not a BS/MD program, and so on.

This is indeed not necessarily going to capture the concept of a truly “assured” college. In practice, I think one way of handling that is to see if there are Likelies suitable for you that have early rolling or EA admissions. If you get into one of those, problem solved. If you get to RD and that hasn’t happened yet, then you might want to consider a VERY likely application in RD. Although even then, if you are not admitted anywhere as of the typical RD notification dates in March, there are still going to be college accepting new applications.

For the most part, the 50%+ acceptance rate filter is going to take out the colleges that seem to be doing this. Like Tufts, say, is viewed as one of those colleges, so much so that practice is sometimes known as “Tufts Syndrome”. But Tufts has an acceptance rate of 10%, which in fact means that it can’t even be a Target by those definitions, only a Reach or Unlikely depending on your numbers.

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Obviously it is up to each kid and family to decide what actually makes sense for them.

I will just note as a general observation that merit is a possibility for many kids with high numbers, such that their practical options are not just limited to being full pay everywhere outside of their in-state publics, they can also use those high numbers to chase merit offers.

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American University at 47% is pretty close to that 50+% criterion.

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So I am not personally sure that American actually engages in naked yield protection. In my circles, high numbers kids can in fact get admitted to American in RD, but the conventional wisdom is they have to credibly demonstrate a lot of interest. When they do that, however, it does seem to work.

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I feel the same way as you. Being full-pay and living in CA with a high stats kid, we are fortunate to have some terrific in-state choices for about $45-50K (UCLA, Berkeley). Not sure I would have supported a ‘middling’ private college even with some merit aid. Happy to pay full freight for a ‘famous’ private college (without merit aid) that had amazing resources, knowing that the “true” admissions rates at these places for high stats kids is more like 15-20%.

So we supported a college application list of highly-resourced, brand-name colleges, and then the UC’s, and then 1-2 safeties. That’s it. I didn’t see any point in considering expensive privates (even with some merit aid) like Boston University, NYU, Tufts, Wake Forest, Tulane, George Washington, USC, etc.

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In my area, our state flagship (an excellent school) is where those who seek prestige send their kids. Beyond that, very few care about brand/prestige/selectivity … most send their kids to one of the other state schools, either sleep away or close to home. Kids from the “lesser” state schools get good jobs after graduation. This just isn’t a brand-chasing area. Midwest, suburban, mixed bag socioeconomically.

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I think in cases like that, it becomes a question more of different than better.

Like I personally believe a large, general interest public college in the state they grew up may not be the best choice for all kids. For some it is great, but for others a smaller college, or one with a specific focus, or one that gives them a chance to try out living somewhere else, might be more suitable.

Such a college might not be ranked as highly by the US News. It may not even be on the same list at all. And again, I am not suggesting every kid should go to such a college.

I do think, though, it can be a good option for some kids to consider, assuming they can make it work financially.

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Actually, when I see a kid who is posting college choices based on major, I ask if they’ll want to be at one of those schools if they change majors. More often than not, I’ve seen kids with career aspirations at age 17 change their minds by age 19, and am generally opposed to choosing a school for a particular major.

High school kids can’t imagine that they will ever not want to be a doctor, lawyer, an investment banker (even though they don’t know what investment bankers do) or creative writers. But most of them don’t wind up in these careers. And usually not because they couldn’t get in to law school or med school.

If only we could get kids to realize this, and that we could stop parents from pushing kids into careers that don’t fit them because they think it’s marketable (and no, I was told not to get any kind of liberal arts degree back then, too, when inflation was 10% and so was unemployment). Few of my friends wound up doing work that was even vaguely connected to their majors, even the STEM majors.

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And I think this is very true throughout the midwest. It isn’t that people haven’t heard of Harvard or Yale, and aren’t happy for those who want to go to those schools, but they really are just as happy to get into Wisconsin (any of the campuses) or to go ‘OOS’ to Minnesota for just slightly more with tuition reciprocity. In my sister’s class, one went to Harvard, one to MIT, and she to Middlebury (for one year, then to Madison) but no one was dissappointed in staying instate, or even in town (we had a UW branch in town).

In my class? One to Notre Dame and that was a big deal. Football. Green and gold colors (sometimes). Just like the Packers.

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When my daughter picked a tech college for engineering, I was okay with it because I knew that even if she changed from engineering it would be to another STEM major (chemistry, math) and she didn’t need a big school that offered Latin or mythology or even a lot of history classes. My other child happily worked her way around the college of Arts and Sciences but she really didn’t care if the college offered engineering or agriculture or for that matter math! (it did but she spent no time in those departments)

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