Real World Experiences.....Big Fish in a Little Pond or Little Fish in a Big Pond?

Parents Forum
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Lots of research has emerged in recent years on students being:

A) “A Big Fish in a Little Pond,” i.e., being an admitted student in the top 25% of their entering class in a less “prestigious” school.

Or

B) “A Little Fish in a Big Pond,” i.e., being an admitted student in the bottom 25% of their entering class in a more “prestigious” school.

I don’t want to share the research and color the responses of parents.

Rather, I would love to hear the stories of parents/students who fell into category A or B. What was your experience like? Do you ever wish that your child had gone into the category opposite of what they went into?

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I think there’s more to it. You could be an academic superstar vs the masses but not take advantage or in the bottom 25%, but stepping outside to take advantage of the enrichment a program offers.

My second is the big fish smaller pond. She’s in the top programs of her Honors College and has taken advantage.

Had she gone to the large publics she got into, she’d have taken advantage but likely been just one of many vs in this small cohort as she was above the students at her school stat wise but not at the large publics. Same with the LAC that took her. But she’d still hunger for more.

Getting in is one thing. My first - didn’t take huge advantage of opportunities like my daughter. He went to a large school. Even if they were force fed to him (even at a small school), he wouldn’t have taken advantage. And he’s doing very well job wise.

So I think one has to look deeper than the two classifications.

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It really depends on individual preferences – what type of environment, what type of experience does the student want?

FWIW my S felt a LAC would be too small and opted for a mid-sized university - he had a fantastic experience. My D thrives in small, close knit environments and absolutely loved her LAC. Both got stellar educations, found wonderful friends, took advantage of opportunities offered at their colleges, and had great post-graduation outcomes.

My best advice – focus on fit for your student.

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Just to share an experience here, I have a friend that went to a T10, and they noted that while they were one of the top students at their high school, they were almost immediately struggling in college. They found their fellow students to be very high achieving and quite competitive (not in an overly negative way, but that they all cared deeply about their grades). In the end, they found it difficult, BUT they noted that it did help them to up their own game. While they never felt quite part of the smart kids club, they did feel pretty well prepared when going to law school.

Long story short, it was definitely a challenge for them which made them somewhat miserable at times, but that in the end seemed ok. So probably not the most glowing review of being the little fish in a big pond.

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My twins had some of this (category A), with S18 opting for a T20 and D18 taking a full ride cohort scholarship at a ~T100 school. (Though not category B as S18 was also top in his class). They were essentially equivalent in high school in terms of academics and quality of ECs (top 1-2%).

The biggest difference I saw was not the standard of students (D18’s freshman year roommate won a Rhodes scholarship) but their ambitions. A far greater proportion of S18’s classmates wanted to go to major cities (NY/DC/SF/LA) and prestigious jobs after college. And those opportunities were readily available to them. Whereas even in D’s cohort (the top 1% of entering students) most wanted to stay in the region and have an enjoyable life (eg lots of outdoor recreation) rather than seeking the most prestigious/highest paying career. They could have pursued the same opportunities (albeit less straightforwardly in some prestige-sensitive jobs) but didn’t want to.

That doesn’t mean I wish D18 had chosen the other path. She went there for performing arts and the money left as a result of her full ride has been huge in giving her the freedom to pursue that low paying career. But if/when she moves on from dance I do think location and doing something enjoyable is going to be more important to her than a high paying job.

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Thank you for that amazing perspective. You had kids in both categories.

I personally graduated from an average state school and then an elite grad school. Your student’s collective experience is exactly what I experienced.

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My husband chose an “A” experience over a “B” experience. He was admitted to and visited a tippy top school that he would have been in a the “B” category for.

After his visit, where he felt like he was nothing special at the “category B” school, where professors could barely give him the time of day for any conversation, he toured at state flagship where he was definitely in the “A” category, and felt like he really liked the personal attention he was given, and felt like he would be a stand out at that school.

He chose the category A school with no regrets (and stayed for grad school). While one career path didn’t work out for him that might have been made somewhat easier had he chosen the category B school, in the end he found a well paying/fulfilling career that works well for him/our family.

I feel like my S25 may end up having a similar choice, so it will be interesting to see what he picks. He has heard his dad’s story about making the choice not to go to the prestigious school many times, and is also considering the same prestigious school.

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That perspective is very valuable. Thank you!

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My d22 probably fits into Category B. She attended a truly subpar high school where guidance counselors refused to allow freshman things like social studies classes, and calculus was a zero-hour class not available to students who needed buses to get there.

When you do not live on the road system, choices are limited.

She had nearly perfect grades and good but not Ivy-caliber scores and definitely got everything she could out of what was available. She was accepted to Barnard, and given that everyone’s grades and scores there are through the roof, she was likely in the bottom quarter of admitted students.

I worried some about her starting behind. So many of her classmates had vastly more advanced coursework available in high school.

I was wrong. She immediately rose to the occasion, takes so many classes that she needs waivers for her credit count, tutors, performs, and is on the dean’s list. She just needed access.

I guess the moral of this story is that you don’t always know how a high school record projects forward. Fish adjust to the size of the pond.

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My D chose big fish in a small pond. She visited a number of schools and thought she knew what she wanted. Shortly after she started school, she knew that it wasn’t the right fit. She had gone to a very competitive high school, and this particular college actually felt too much like her high school. Her high school class was 180, so she didn’t think a school of 2,200 was too small. It turned out that she needed to be in a bigger pond - but not a huge pond. She ended up transferring sophomore year to a school that was medium sized (around 7,000), and it was much better for her. There were more opportunities in terms of both classes and extracurriculars. If the pond ends up not quite fitting, it is okay to make a change.

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By “top 25%” and “bottom 25%” are you referring to SAT scores? I attended Stanford. I had perfect scores on all standardized tests involving math or science, but was in the bottom 1% (among 5 lowest scores in my year) for CR, mostly due to vocabulary-related sections. I attended a basic public HS with little history of students attending such colleges, but also took classes at a nearby university, some of which were a similar level to corresponding Stanford classes. I’m not sure if that makes me a big fish or a little fish?

If I consider HS a small pond and college a big pond, the latter suited me better. I was often bored out of my mind in many HS classes, which sometimes led to mediocre grades in classes that did not interest me. I did not have this problem at Stanford, contributing to achieving superior grades to HS. Being surrounding by high achieving students pushed me to achieve higher levels. The environment also helped, with professors often encouraging out of the box and creative thinking – often applying concepts from text/classes, rather than focusing simple regurgitation of memorized material. Being surrounded by high achieving students also contributed to better experiences in group projects, dorms, and generally interacting with other students. This environment difference is not limited to big pond vs little pond, although there is likely a correlation.

I was among the ~1/3 of engineering students at Stanford who do a co-terminal masters – simultaneously pursuing a BS + MS degree. I’m not sure whether I’d also have pursued a grad degree had I attended a less selective college or do what college I would have attended for grad school. I don’t think big fish vs small fish would be a primary factor for me in grad degrees. After college, I worked in an engineering job, along side engineers from both more selective colleges and less selective colleges. My job search strategy was handing out resumes at the engineering career fair, so I primarily applied to the colleges that attended career fair, which was were mostly in state. It’s unclear how job and career would have differed, had I attended a less selective college.

There would likely be different outcomes at different colleges, but again I don’t think the key factor would be big fish vs small fish. For example, I entered as a prospective EE major, but I quickly found that I was also interested in CS. However, in CS I felt at a disadvantage due to not having a computer and needing to bike across campus for shared computer resources to do assignments. Had I attended a college with closer shared computer resources or some kind of low cost computer rental, I might have been a CS major instead of EE. This could have happened at both a big pond and little pond college.

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Our son was above average in a very competitive HS, but not top 10%. However, swimming in that pool helped make him a big fish at the academy where he graduated #2 in the EE/CS department. In the Army, he has been ranked #1 in his battalion every year since commissioning. Until recently, he would say he hasn’t been challenged quite like he was during his HS years and wouldn’t trade that early rigor for anything as it gave him the tools and taught him the discipline necessary for everything that came after. He thrives on challenge, is never intimidated, and prefers to work with those he feels are smarter than he is. Last summer, the Army moved him to a unit more in line with his aptitudes and where he is challenged daily. He is finally happy in his work. I would say that he is a natural big fish who keeps looking for bigger ponds though both his HS and his college choices were well-suited to him. No regrets.

Going back a few decades, I graduated at the top of my (large) HS class, dropped out of beauty school and, later, graduated at the top of my (large) college class. Ten years into my career, I dropped out of HBS. I’m retired now from a lucrative but soul-sucking career. My regret is that I didn’t jump out of the pond during the minnow stage before being a big fish made it harder to grow legs and run toward whatever it was I was probably better suited for. I’m using retirement to figure this out.

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Thanks to your son for her service. Interesting career story for both of you.

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I guess I’ve always been a small fish in a small pond. I was not the strongest HS student. I went to a public university for both my bachelors and masters degrees, and for my post masters studies…and not flagships.

Despite this, I have had a very successful career in my field, and I think I’m well regarded by both local colleagues as well as folks in my professional association.

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I have two very different kids who had to two very different school journeys and chose two very different pond sizes.

D22 was a fish. Not a big fish, not a small fish, just an overlooked fish in a murky pond. She was nothing special in a nothing special mid-sized school as she didn’t care about her grades, didn’t feel any connection to her teachers, wasn’t going to fight for attention like the honors students did, and never even bothered to take the SAT/ACT. She always did well in the statewide testing, scoring in the top 1% in the district, but she didn’t take APs and graduated somewhere between a 3.5-3.7 (grades and school were so meaningless to her that I don’t even remember). She only applied to one non-flagship state school where she had an automatic admittance and easily qualified as top 25%, but that’s because their stats are very low. It is, however, well-known for a couple of majors. She is in one of those majors with a lot of experience due to a pathway program she was in in high school and a job she has held since she was 16.

She has flourished. Her classes are small, the campus is small, she gets lots of individual attention from her teachers who can see she is a superstar in her chosen field and she has received the departmental scholarship for the top student in her major. She says she can’t picture going anywhere else and loves every minute of it (after hating every minute of high school).

S23 was a very big fish (dare I say a shark) in a very small pond. He went to a private high school and graduated in a class of just under 70, which seemed big considering his middle school only had 10 kids in his grade. 97.9 GPA UW, salutatorian (should have been val., but that’s a story for another day), 3 sport varsity captain (recruited in 2 of them), school leader, departmental awards in every subject and loved by all of the faculty (won the most prestigious school award I’m still blown away by what they had to say about him). He went TO as he is a horrible standardized test taker due to an LD. He chose to attend a very large state (OOS) flagship that isn’t considered very competitive, but is ranked in the top 5 for his major and was by far the best fit for him. He is in the Honors program so I’m assuming he’d be in the top 25%, but as he went TO, I’m not sure where he’d stack up. Truthfully, I think the school is so big that the even the top 1% really flattens out. Once you are there, it’s going to be all about if you take advantage of opportunities because no one is going to know you are a 1%er. You might breeze through your work quicker, but that’s about it.

He, also, is flourishing. He is living his best life, but it looks very different than what it looked like in high school. Because he decided to not play a sport in college he has had so much time to devote to exploring new activities (never thought my prep school kid would be line dancing on a Friday night) and living his best life by taking advantage of all of the outdoor recreational opportunities. He is already well known in his department, working 10 hours a week for a professor in the academic center that he’d love to run one day, and scored a prime summer job/internship. Although it is a big school, his department isn’t that big and he came in with a lot of skills that you wouldn’t expect someone to have right out of high school. He is a go getter and immediately put himself out there. They never cared about his high school awards or GPA, but they did care about specific skills that he had. Those were skills he could have had no matter what his high school rank was. He would have been miserable in a small pond. He has a smaller cohort in the Honors program where he is intellectually challenged, but he doesn’t feel like he always has to be the one leading the discussion like he did in high school and he’s really enjoying blending in more and just doing his thing.

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I had the same experience at a big school. It is hard to stand out in a giant school in general, but your department is likely small enough that you REALLY CAN stand out.

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I was a big fish in a big pond in HS but very very much a little fish in a big pond in college. I still wonder if I had gone to a small pond school, if I would have stuck with my original major and not gotten weeded out.

As such, I was really hoping my D would choose a small supportive school but she went with a big pond, both for HS and college. She was in the top 10% at both so it worked for her.

IMO, it’s very personality dependent…and maybe major dependent too.

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Similar story here. I was a small fish in my original major, then a much bigger fish in my second major. I do also wonder if I could have survived in the first major at a different college, but no real regrets because I am happy with how things turned out.

And my sense is this is an extremely common story among kids who do very well in HS. You are under the impression you are really good at something, then you hit a college full of other kids who also did very well in HS, and maybe you are not as good as you thought. But if you are open-minded, maybe you can find something new that actually does suit your abilities.

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Very much student and personality dependent. I chose a full ride at a top 25 law school (big fish, small pond) over Stanford Law School, my dream school. While having no debt has been amazing, I’m a competitive, driven person and I’ve never been able to shake the what could have been question. But we always wonder what’s behind the other door! That said, I do encourage my kids to always start with the hardest path - you can drop down if need be. But you’ll never know if you could have swam in the big pond unless you try!

On the flip side, my dad chose a small LAC over Yale for undergrad and he has been a “star” at that LAC ever since - valedictorian, athlete, sits on the Board of Trustees, has received lifetime awards from the school, and he will he give a hefty donation there when he passes in gratitude for what the school did for him. Wouldn’t have been the case at Yale.

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I find it difficult to place students into either category because individuals have strengths and weaknesses in different areas.

When I assess a student, I focus mostly on that individual’s strengths/interests, while, of course, being aware of areas of weakness or low interest.

In short, I see individuals, not categories.

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