Kids go 4 years to high school without parents worrying too much about fit.

Suburban or urban or rural high does not seem to matter. Warm or cold weather does not seem to matter. Brick or gothic architecture does not seem to matter. Mountains or beach location does not seem to matter.

You just go to high school that is assigned to you. But once they turn 18, all the above seem to suddenly take an enormous importance. Things 20 years ago no one cared much about.

That is the fit fetish for you.

Prestige has an inherently built in attraction that college counselors found an attractive business opportunity catering to parents. So they came up with "spike" as a concept to sell. If these college counselors sell "well rounded", they wont be able to add much value. Make it mysterious and complicated and vola you can charge $100k per year.

But this left a market gap catering to parents who dont want to spend those amounts of money or were turned off by the above process or grades/scores might make it problematic to get admission anyway. So college counselors came up with "Fit" to address this segment of the market.

Many agree with flaws in chasing prestige but do not see the flaws inherent in fit.

18 year olds are quite adaptable and malleable. The vast majority of the colleges can fit the needs of vast majority of the students.

Anonymous wrote:As a student I don't really believe in "fit," at least in the way that people on this forum describe it. I don't think high schoolers can accurately understand what they like or dislike about a college environment until they actually are in college. I found that after having stayed over with friends at many different colleges, there were many schools I really wanted to go to as a high schooler that I actually wouldn't have enjoyed, while there were a couple of schools I didn't think about seriously/didn't apply to that I regret not trying as hard for in hindsight. There's definitely some importance (don't go to Caltech as a humanities major, and if you feel the vibes are off at a certain school, it's better to avoid) but the super small differences that make the difference aren't really things you can notice from the HS perspective

My DS has been very direct about it and I doubt he will be proven wrong.

Anonymous wrote:As a student I don't really believe in "fit," at least in the way that people on this forum describe it. I don't think high schoolers can accurately understand what they like or dislike about a college environment until they actually are in college. I found that after having stayed over with friends at many different colleges, there were many schools I really wanted to go to as a high schooler that I actually wouldn't have enjoyed, while there were a couple of schools I didn't think about seriously/didn't apply to that I regret not trying as hard for in hindsight. There's definitely some importance (don't go to Caltech as a humanities major, and if you feel the vibes are off at a certain school, it's better to avoid) but the super small differences that make the difference aren't really things you can notice from the HS perspective

I suspect a good college counselor could have predicted some of what you learned only through visiting friends.

Anonymous wrote:As a student I don't really believe in "fit," at least in the way that people on this forum describe it. I don't think high schoolers can accurately understand what they like or dislike about a college environment until they actually are in college. I found that after having stayed over with friends at many different colleges, there were many schools I really wanted to go to as a high schooler that I actually wouldn't have enjoyed, while there were a couple of schools I didn't think about seriously/didn't apply to that I regret not trying as hard for in hindsight. There's definitely some importance (don't go to Caltech as a humanities major, and if you feel the vibes are off at a certain school, it's better to avoid) but the super small differences that make the difference aren't really things you can notice from the HS perspective

Also, despite begrudgingly committing to the school I now attend, I've had the time of my life here and am so glad that I didn't attend some of the other places I applied to/thought were better than this place

As a student I don't really believe in "fit," at least in the way that people on this forum describe it. I don't think high schoolers can accurately understand what they like or dislike about a college environment until they actually are in college. I found that after having stayed over with friends at many different colleges, there were many schools I really wanted to go to as a high schooler that I actually wouldn't have enjoyed, while there were a couple of schools I didn't think about seriously/didn't apply to that I regret not trying as hard for in hindsight. There's definitely some importance (don't go to Caltech as a humanities major, and if you feel the vibes are off at a certain school, it's better to avoid) but the super small differences that make the difference aren't really things you can notice from the HS perspective

Anonymous wrote:20 years ago no one was talking about fit. The previous 50 years before that students and families were content to go college nearby. Then the fit craze got started by college counselors as something they can sell.

+1

Fit fetish is just nonsense.

20 years ago no one was talking about fit. The previous 50 years before that students and families were content to go college nearby. Then the fit craze got started by college counselors as something they can sell.

Anonymous wrote:The snark on this forum is next level.

OP, good for you for running down “fit”. Fwiw, I chased prestige as a student, because I didn’t know any better. I don’t regret it in a sense. But I had a pretty miserable experience in a lot of ways. Hoping my kid makes a better choice if they have the chance.

See I know kids who chased social vibe and fit (aka Michigan, Wake and also Vanderbilt) and they aren’t super happy either.

So what’s the right way?

Anonymous wrote:

- As rankings convinced families there was a single "best" college, independent counselors and progressive admissions officers needed a counter-argument. They began preaching "fit" to tell students that the best college was actually the one that suited them.

How is this true? There are eight Ivy League schools, 20 T20 schools, and five top LACs. Are you sure there’s a “single” school? So many schools for your selection.

The snark on this forum is next level.

OP, good for you for running down “fit”. Fwiw, I chased prestige as a student, because I didn’t know any better. I don’t regret it in a sense. But I had a pretty miserable experience in a lot of ways. Hoping my kid makes a better choice if they have the chance.

Anonymous wrote:I started researching college admissions process for my DC who is a junior in HS. I kept encountering fit repeatedly, so wanted to learn what it is and how it originated. Here are a few interesting tidbits:

- The term "College Fit" was largely popularized as a counter-movement to the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

- As rankings convinced families there was a single "best" college, independent counselors and progressive admissions officers needed a counter-argument. They began preaching "fit" to tell students that the best college was actually the one that suited them.

- Loren Pope is arguably the most important figure in popularizing this version of "fit." His seminal book, Colleges That Change Lives (1996), explicitly argued that small, lesser-known schools could be a better "fit" for a student's development than a prestigious Ivy League university.

- If Loren Pope lit the flame, Lloyd Thacker turned it into a bonfire. A former admissions officer, Thacker founded the Education Conservancy in 2004 specifically to combat the commercialization of admissions. His book, College Unranked, became a manifesto for the "fit over prestige" movement.

- The concept reached mass cultural saturation with New York Times columnist Frank Bruni’s 2015 bestseller, Where You Go Is Not Who You Will Be. Bruni aggregated all the previous decades of research and philosophy into a mainstream argument, effectively cementing "fit" as the standard advice given to every middle-class American family.

me likey the irony

Ok.... ycbk

I started researching college admissions process for my DC who is a junior in HS. I kept encountering fit repeatedly, so wanted to learn what it is and how it originated. Here are a few interesting tidbits:

- The term "College Fit" was largely popularized as a counter-movement to the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

- As rankings convinced families there was a single "best" college, independent counselors and progressive admissions officers needed a counter-argument. They began preaching "fit" to tell students that the best college was actually the one that suited them.

- Loren Pope is arguably the most important figure in popularizing this version of "fit." His seminal book, Colleges That Change Lives (1996), explicitly argued that small, lesser-known schools could be a better "fit" for a student's development than a prestigious Ivy League university.

- If Loren Pope lit the flame, Lloyd Thacker turned it into a bonfire. A former admissions officer, Thacker founded the Education Conservancy in 2004 specifically to combat the commercialization of admissions. His book, College Unranked, became a manifesto for the "fit over prestige" movement.

- The concept reached mass cultural saturation with New York Times columnist Frank Bruni’s 2015 bestseller, Where You Go Is Not Who You Will Be. Bruni aggregated all the previous decades of research and philosophy into a mainstream argument, effectively cementing "fit" as the standard advice given to every middle-class American family.