<p>It's been both good and bad. My daughter has been on CC for several years. Without it, she would likely have never learned what it takes to compete at the highest levels. As it is, she has offers from the very best schools and scholarships. The negative was the investment of emotion in her EA application. It became an obsession that was not healthy.</p>
<p>i have to agree with everything said, including the fact that low post counts=better grades ;)... lol... the cafe is messed up, there is so much debate in there, and everyone's venting over race, or some other controversial issue, the mods really need to step it up in there!</p>
<p>My kids would never come to this site because they are too busy and neither one of them is overly interested in the process. Eldest has his applications out and that's that. I think it's better. Too many kids are living in the FUTURE when they should be making the most of their last year(s) in high school. </p>
<p>My sister compares the college obsession to the "marriage myth" - "If only I can find just the right guy (substitute - college) my life will be PERFECT..." </p>
<p>Although CC has offered me some great tips, I've grown pretty bored with the whole college application thing now that it's sort of all done. I do not, however, think it's a good place for kids (or parents!) to spend a ton of time. Get your answers and move on to something more important.</p>
<p>I do college research as a form of escapism.
Which isn't great, I guess -- but you know, I could be smoking crack.</p>
<p>Must Get Off Cc... Gotta Do Stat :(</p>
<p>Even though I'm prejudiced, I'll comment...</p>
<p>CC, including both the content site and forum, was founded to give students and parents without access to excellent college counseling a place to learn about the college process. In particular, we hoped we'd be a way for students to broaden their college lists and for those students applying to very selective schools to not only assess but improve their chance of admission.</p>
<p>I think we have succeeded in that mission - anyone who reads enough here will end up being exposed to colleges they weren't familiar with, and will learn a lot about the admissions process.</p>
<p>On the downside, there is a lot of "stats comparison" here that might be intimidating to interesting students with less than platinum scores. (This is a difficult issue - in my experience, one of the biggest problems is over-optimism. A small-town valedictorian with a 1480 SAT may be told that he's a shoo-in at Harvard by his counselor and teachers; a bit of CC-induced skepticism may serve a useful purpose in that case. One hopes that healthy skepticism doesn't turn into complete discouragement, though.) </p>
<p>The other negative I see is that there's a lot of bandwidth wasted comparing excellent schools and arguing which is "better". Most of this discussion is useless from the standpoint of the individual student choosing where to apply or enroll, but comparative discussions are inevitable in an open forum.</p>
<p>So... for the student or parent who can separate the wheat from the chaff, CC should be a good thing. ;)</p>
<p>I come from an tiny, upstart school whose counselors have little (read: no) experience with sending students to top schools. As a result CC is proving to be an indispensable resource.</p>
<p>I personally know of someone who badly needed CC. A friend of mine, who was my former high school's valedictorian, had a pretty high ACT (34) and was NOT advised well. He applied to the local state university, UMichigan, and Harvard: basically a sure thing, a reach, and an extreme reach. The counselors really had no idea of the level of competition at such places and did not understand that someone in a financial situation such as his could not afford to apply to only three places, especially considering none of them were matches. Not surprisingly, Harvard rejected him, and UMichigan did not offer enough money. He ended up at the local state university where he does not fit in and is not challenged. I'm not saying average state u's are academic purgatory; I'm just saying he could have done much better if he applied to better matches.</p>
<p>I would probably end up in a similar situation if I did not find CC. I now have a much better idea of the competition at top schools and how a person in my financial position should go about applying. </p>
<p>However, I don't know if I'm still on the college track considering all the extra time I have is spent here. CC is extremely addictive; I'm in a computer lab right now and am supposed to be working on calculus, but instead I'm posting on CC!</p>
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<p>I had learned my skepticism from certain famous books about the admissions process before this CC site was founded, but, yes, there are a lot of families in a lot of places that overestimate their chances by considering only the universe of their local school. There are too many school districts, with too many high schools (not to mention too many private schools) for every valedictorian to necessarily get into a first-choice college. There are plenty of high scorers on the SAT as well, </p>
<p>(and I thank a CC participant for first sharing this link) so no parent should think it is a "massacre" when a child with a strong high school record and a high SAT gets rejected from a top school--that happens all the time. </p>
<p>So I think the net effect of CC is good for students, and good for parents. It helps people look at a broader universe of students earlier in the application process, and helps people choose safeties and match schools more thoughtfully than most high school counselors ever do. It also helps the parents who get involved in the CC community really early to be realistic about what kind of resume-building it takes to give a child the highest chance of admission at the most selective schools. And the CC community is full of other good advice for parents, including the advice to let go and let the students take control of the application process. That's got to be good for the students.</p>
<p>also allows us to be as insecure as we want!</p>
<p>CC is good because I learned there're something like Harvard SSP from the forum which I think, if I didn't visit the forum, I will never know such things. However, CC is bad, because I cannot take that many AP classes, and get perfect scores.This makes me uncomfortable, I hate imperfection, and almost every single person on CC is better than me.</p>
<p>join the club! it's amazing this topic hasn't come up before</p>
<p>CC was where I met my partner. We are starting a FX fund together. Not many places where you meet 16 year old auto intraday currency traders specialising in G7 currencies ;). Interesting to note the third partner is from another forum that is the complete opposite of CC---a ferrari forum. Life is random. Thats good! :)</p>
<p>CC is a parent thing in our household. :) I've had to act as guidance counselor for my kids, and this site has helped tremendously with navigating the application processs. I feel that the much-needed dose of reality also comes with a lot of support. We've definitely avoided some disasters because posters have shared their experiences here. And it's nice to have people to ride out the last two weeks of March.</p>
<p>I will encourage my daughter to visit once she has all her decisions from schools. It's a chance to chat with others that are accepted at those schools and perhaps get some questions answered.</p>
<p>But, I would not recommend it for her until she is at that stage. I just found it last week, after she was waitlisted at Macalester and it has made me crazy. It might have been useful earlier in helping us choose which colleges to apply to but at this point in time the anxiety level is contagious.</p>