Hi everyone,
Here at College Confidential, we are a small but committed team of folks passionate about student success and making CC the best place on the internet for authentic, unfiltered discussion about college admissions. Our community is uniquely suited to providing real advice from a parent and student perspective.
It’s no secret that CC has often changed hands over the past few years, and as a result has struggled to maintain the best experience for our community - both the long-time users and the new ones that come every year. I believe all that is changing for the better. I also have a few updates that I’m excited to share with you right now!
College Confidential, LLC
CC is now its own independent entity. While this might not seem like a big deal, this is a great step forward in establishing CC’s legitimate presence in the marketplace, especially with regards to our partnerships with schools.
Renewed focus on direct school partnerships
In order to make CC the best place on the internet to discuss college admissions, we need to forge partnerships with key schools to forge connections between parents, students, admissions staff and others. We’ve started the process with schools like uChicago and NYU, but want to continue it with many more schools that are talked about on CC. (More details about these relationships to come!)
Removal of problematic programmatic advertising
We realize that the addition of programmatic advertising over the past few years has provided needed revenue but also degraded our community experience. Programmatic ads use data the advertisers have about visitors to guess what sort of ads they might be interested in. Companies that know a lot about their audience (think Google and Facebook) do a better job serving relevant ads. As you might have noticed, ads on CC tend to not be as relevant to visitors. This sort of advertising also comes with a performance cost on the site, so eliminating these ads will help us keep the site responsive.
Over the next few months, we’ll be investing in improving the CC experience by removing problematic programmatic advertising from the site. Practically, this will mean the removal of sticky footer and video ads. (This does not include advertising by direct partners.)
Return of CCAdminJon
When Jon came on as Community Manager in 2020, he revolutionized our moderation and brought a thoughtfulness to our community nurturing and growth that we didn’t have in the past. Well, he’s back. I’m so excited to announce @CCAdminJon as our Head of Community starting June 13!
Better Technology
We’ve struggled with the reliability of the site over the past year. That will all change with a new web host. We weren’t able to do this in the past as part of a larger entity, but the added flexibility will allow us to drastically reduce unplanned outages once we move over!
There’s much more in store for CC in the coming year. I’m excited to be part of CC for this upcoming admissions season and can’t wait to see our community grow and thrive!
CCAdminMike