Chase the vibe.

College counselors are preying on parents and students, making the process look more complex and mysterious than it is.

College counselors have it easy with prestige chasing parents/students. The highly rejective process at these schools itself is a great sales tool and these counselors peddle various cockamamie approaches to gullible parents.

To attract the non-prestige seeking parents, college counselors resort to selling fit. One popular counselor discourages applying to T75 schools and suggests many schools for which admission in straightforward. Essays are not going to be that important for many of these schools. Yet the counselor charges a lot of money for various ancillary services including essays for these students.

Anonymous wrote:If you are a family for whom tuition is the number one deciding factor, the “fit”conversation is very different than a family that has the financial freedom to pay full pay at highly selective/small $$$ schools. It’s not terribly different from those of us who send our kids to the 3000 student public high school vs those of us who opt for small private high school.

Those who pay for private high school are the minority by a great margin. However, those who make over 250k and under 350k without adequate savings who do not qualify for aid and are not able to pay 90k per year are in fact a disctinct minority of applicant families. The majority are under 250k and get need based aid, sometimes quite generous aid at top schools.

For some, finding the best fit means Ivy/+: the colleges with the highest percentage of 99 and 99.9% students as well as value smaller classes even for stem. The student mix and class intensity at these places makes them a fit. The prestige is a positive side effect but not the reason for the fit

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Fit was talked about at least 40 years ago.

Actually 116 years ago in 1909 by Frank Parsons in his 1909 book Choosing a Vocation. But it was quite uncommon until the last 20 odd years.

I would argue that before USNWR, fit was more important.