“Ah, College Confidential: the web’s premier community for college-bound individuals. Some love it, some have described it as, “an absolutely awful website that privileges and celebrates the Ivy League-Potential student, while completely forgetting about everyone else.” It’s, erm, controversial, to say the least. But despite its elitist, overzealous reputation, there are ways that any student can get something out if it-- if you use it correctly.”
What do you think of the advice? Feel free to add your own Do/Don’t items.
(For the record, at CC we are constantly trying to avoid any elitist emphasis - a relatively early step in CC’s evolution was to start individual forums for hundreds of colleges, not just a handful of ultra-selective schools. But it’s a fact that a school that gets tens of thousands of applicants and admits just a single-digit percentage using often mysterious criteria will generate more angst, and more discussion, than an excellent state school with well-defined GPA/SAT cutoffs. 99.999% of our forum content is created by our members, who choose their own topics and areas of interest.)
It’s pretty much commonsensical stuff. I think the idea that a guidance counselor or certain guides and books are more trustworthy sources of admissions info then them the CC forum is both true and way off-base at the same time.
Our experience was that almost nobody around us, including guidance counselors, were in a position to really help us. Our GC was responsible for a few hundred kids. Our D needed guidance that her counselor couldn’t give because she never had a student go for the Ivy league. CC really helped to fill in the gap. I found out so many things that were never told to me or never had experience with growing up about admissions, schools, summer programs, etc.
And as far as being elitist, I learned about free programs for gifted students that would level the playing field with kids from wealthier families.
Maybe there is a sense of academic elitism here but that could be because people who visit this site are likely more interested in academics and academic success and future success than those who don’t care for the site.
I thought the article was benign and mainly common sense but CC allows people to share experience which can’t be gained through books and counselors in the same unfiltered way. That means that each anecdotal experience has its own inherent biases but collectively, I’d trust CC over a trained professional that leaves stuff out, doesn’t tell you what he/she doesn’t know and is concerned with looking “professional.”
CC has been a wonderful community! I only wish I’d found it sooner. My dd would not have had the success she has had if I hadn’t found it when I did. CC made her journey to an elite college seamless and pitfall free,
I find it interesting that the Huffpo article never mentions what I consider to be one of the greatest strengths of CC, which is help in determining affordability and understanding financial aid & merit aid options. But it was written by a student… maybe one who didn’t need to worry about that.
Note that HuffPo’s content model is extremely diverse - they run pieces from true experts in various fields, but they also run cheesy bikini pics. And then there’s their political stuff… Plus, they sometimes syndicate stuff from other sites. So, the fact that an article appeared there doesn’t say much about its quality - could be trash, could be treasure. Or something in between.
I think that the Urban Dictionary definition is more accurate to CC than anything.
I see people saying that someone has almost a 0% chance of getting into a school when his or her stats aren’t even that far outside the 50th percentile. There are some people who legitimately have a very low or zero percent chance of getting into a school (sorry people with below a 1900 applying to an Ivy League school), but I think that there’s just such a jaded view of the SAT/ACT because of this site. In my school at least, which is filled with hundreds of well-educated and smart students, no one would ever say that a 2000 on the SAT is bad. It might not be a phenomenal score, but it’s a score that the vast majority of students would love to get. However, on CC that might be looked at as “mediocre.” Obviously it’s not the best score, but saying that a score that almost 94-95% of people will never get is mediocre is just absurd.
I think that this site is good for a lot of things, I’ve gotten a lot of decent information from it and some people are incredibly kind and helpful, however I think we have to keep everything in perspective of how the average person scores. Just my opinion on CC as a relatively high-achieving student who’s looked at more than my fair share of chances posts.
Before taking any advice, DO get a sense of the member’s credibility. Start off by asking how new the member is to the community, and whether the member has made a lot of posts. Read old posts made by the member. Is the member an admissions reader, a parent, a teacher/professor, a college student, a high school student, or what? Does the member have a history of being controversial or biased in some way? Does the community as a whole seem to value the member’s contributions?
I have mixed feelings about the “chance me” threads. I think they could be more useful if the whole enterprise was renamed, “Help Me With My List.” My observation is that when kids ask the question that way, they get much better advice–even if the information they share is essentially the same.
For kids with little to no parental help, this site is useful to get them started assuming they are smart enough to not listen to the “OMG, 2300 on the SAT is not going to cut it” crowd. There are a lot of well meaning adults on here who are genuinely interested in helping others out.
For adults who are not familiar with the process it becomes a very useful tool to navigate the overly complex process that is college applications.
Adults can also gather the information necessary to do some good analysis. For example, being pointed towards the common data set.
Overall, the site is very useful.
Of course, there are those that describe this site as “toxic”. There are others who use some of the postings as fodder for their comedy. To each his own.
I’ve been on a variety of discussion boards in the last few decades, with a wide variety of topics and participants. It really doesn’t seem to matter who is involved or what they are discussing: there has always been some degree of meanness, stupidity, anger, and hurt feelings. Even with the help of our generous moderators, it would be naive to think that a CC forum would somehow be immune to all that.
I think this is an excellent site for parents. I learned so very much here, particularly about how financial aid works, how the National Merit process works, and about schools my D may not have considered had I not read about it here. However, I would never want my kid to be reading this site. I think it really ramps up the pressure for the kids here.
"For the record, at CC we are constantly trying to avoid any elitist emphasis - a relatively early step in CC’s evolution was to start individual forums for hundreds of colleges, not just a handful of ultra-selective schools. "
It’s odd to me, however, why you isolate the Ivy League schools from the rest of the highly selective universities. There’s no rationale to separating them like that; they are just highly selective schools that happen to be in a given athletic league. It just adds fuel to the fire for the often-immigrant families who are under the mistaken impression that those right schools have magical powers.
Chance me thread is what it is - you put a post there and get feedback that makes you feel better and crappy at the same time, find a dollar and buy yourself a coffee at McDonalds. Frankly, any kid who posts asking can I get into so and so school with single digit admit rate deserves whatever cud they receive.that passes as feed back.
There are many areas I find a lot more appealing - financial advice forum, parents forum, the yearly support threads, summer programs, graduate schools etc. These are where you can get some real help.
There are many many many (I can keep going) people on CC who go out of the way to do your research for you and provide all kinds of advice and help that should be appreciated and celebrated.
I agree that CC is great for parents. What I like about CC is that while posters can get all heated on some threads on Parent Cafe, same posters will absolutely help each other out when it comes to a college admissions issue.
So I just want to give all my fellow parents here a big sloppy group hug.
