As the parent of a rising HS senior, I am astounded by the abundance of poor, albeit well-meaning, advice on these threads. PLEASE, students, do your homework and read articles from QUALIFIED resources in your search for answers.
This is a fine place to vent, commiserate or just socialize, but the posters on here are largely unqualified to help you. In the best case, following their misguided direction may hurt your chances of getting accepted to the college that’s right for you. In the worst, some of the people on here may actually view you as competition, presenting a serious conflict of interest to help you.
Probably the best indicator of that is to click on the person’s name, to see the number of “likes” and “helpfuls” he/she has received.
Yes, this system will unfortunately eliminate some newer, but helpful resources. But it should also help you identify some of the people most likely to have the right advice for you.
There is a lot of “blind leading the blind” here, especially when HS students give advice. The regs give as good (sometimes better) advice as you will find in many other resources. If a poster has been on CC for several years, that is a good sign.
As with all free advice on the Internet, you have to take it with a grain of salt. Don’t believe everything that people say. There are some long time posters here that give advice that I usually disagree with but most are good. The real problem is the students who give advice to each other.
I’ve found excellent advice on these boards, but you have to be selective. The “chance me/chance me back” threads amongst students new to the process are ridiculous. But advice from long-term (generally adult) posters, who demonstrate some knowledge of the areas that are applicable to you and your kid? Priceless.
(And that’s not a diss to kids, many of whom have wise and thoughtful things to day – just referring to length/depth of experience/perspective about the process, hence the broad generalization about adult posters.)
CC is an incredible resource to students who don’t have access to expensive college counselors or attend private schools that provide college counseling as part of their ‘package.’ Yes, there can be wrong or bad advice, but almost always, a debate follows in which the right answer gets ‘vetted’ by the crowd, or a more nuanced picture is presented. Students/parents who use CC can generally figure out what sounds reasonable and low risk as a strategy, what needs to be checked with an authority, and what alternatives might be out there that they hadn’t even considered. I just wish more kids/parents knew about it and took advantage of it (…ideally by searching for existing threads on the topics of interest to them).
When someone linked to the Cornell admissions officer turned private admissions consultant for hire Reddit AMA, it was interesting to see how well it mirrored what the more experienced/veteran/knowledgable posters write.
I found the Parents Forum and the Financial Aid/Scholarships forums especially helpful. They’re also great places to get a sense of the lay of the land–who’s an experienced voice? Who has specific expertise to offer?
It’s my experience also that when the experienced members get involved, the bad advice that really matters gets corrected. When a new member who is obviously a student presents bad information as fact, you will frequently find a half-dozen members with post counts in the thousands jumping all over it, sometimes in a matter of minutes.
The nonsense that gets spewed on chance threads is usually pretty harmless.
CC is especially valuable when it comes to financial aid questions. The official resources are often confusing and even contradictory; you’re much better off getting advice from someone who’s been there. In fact, a lot of truth gets shared on this board that the official sources deliberately hide from you.
As to sources who might see you as “competition”: I suppose there are a few, but as someone mentioned up-thread, a quick look at a member’s post count or number of “likes” can put the member’s advice into context.
I don’t mean to say that there is no bad advice on CC that has gone unchecked. But as a proportion of the whole, I don’t think there’s an “abundance.”
There’s wonderful advice in the financial aid and parent forums, and in some threads on the admissions and search forums, and some college-specific forums too.
I agree that bad advice in these areas is usually quickly challenged.
Some posters are looking for bad advice: the “chance me” threads where if the student is told that a school is a high reach or out of reach, the student then gets nasty and accuses you of “destroying their dreams”. They are looking for assurances that they have a good chance of admission even with stats that put them well below the 25th percentile of admitted students.
If anyone is here trying to bring down the “competition” with bad advice, they’re wasting their time. Let’s say a college, Dream U, has 20,000 applications for 3,000 spots, and a poster is hoping to be one of the 3,000. By giving bad advice to every student mentioning that college - let’s say that’s 10 a day, or even 20 - and doing so every day for 6 months before the application deadline, their posts are seen by…about 1800 posters. 70-80% of questions will be chance threads or unimportant matters (“Will my reader be biased against me if I note that I run a cat shelter and he/she likes dogs?”). 95% of a rogue poster’s advice will be corrected by several posters with years of experience within a day.
The posts that could lead someone to make a serious mistake in their application will affect 5% of 20-30% of 1800 posters, or about two dozen CC members. A few will be juniors, who aren’t actually “competition.” Let’s say that means 20 seniors affected.
Note that these aren’t 20 certain acceptances, but 20 applicants.
An hour or two each day on CC will lower the pool of applicants who could get those 3,000 spots by 20 out of 20,000. I’d hope anyone with college in their future realizes they should just work on SAT prep, essays, and schoolwork instead.
I think in most cases commentators are trying to give helpful advice (in fact, I’d argue that intentionally bad advice is vanishingly rare here). It’s true there’s “noise” in addition to “signal,” here, of course, but this is a free, open resource and it has a ton to offer. I know those of us who have been here a while and have a lot of insight put in a lot of time and effort in our responses, and I think most students who benefit from the site are appreciative. I get PMs to that effect quite frequently, and I always appreciate them.