S is a senior at Yale. Based on his and his friends’ personality and interests, they are the type of kids that want a diverse experience academically and socially but don’t want to be overwhelmed at Big U. S was a recruited athlete to half a dozen SLACs, but after visits, he felt the schools were too homogeneous. His suitemates have been STEM and humanities types, but I get the sense they like to hang and discuss any topic. I think a lot of kids pick Yale (and Harvard) because of the established residential college/house system that replicate a LAC social environment. I know other colleges have their version of residential colleges, but most are by application so the makeup tends to be less diverse. Many kids are work hard/play hard types, S included, but you can find a tribe of almost any stripe.
I think the kids that would not do well are ones that are very singularly focused on academics, primarily STEM. S was recruited by MIT and Caltech, and the time he spent on campus he described as being very STEM oriented. Even the beer chugging device he saw at MIT was a uniquely engineered device.