Do you recommend CC for your own kids?

My kid showed CC to me after he was accepted to boarding school. I opened an account, lurked for a while and then found my peeps on the Prep School Parents forum. Kiddo had long left CC by then but used to roll his eyes when some of his classmates would tell him what his mom was ranting about on the board. To this day, I still get, “MOM! You HAVE to get off that board. It’s full of crazies. And stop talking about me!”

Did my kid just call me crazy?

My ORM kid with no hooks gained valuable info here on which ECs to pursue. However, he got turned off by kids thinking one needed perfect GPA and test scores to get into top schools. With less than perfect GPA and test scores — but with focused good ECs —my kid got into all colleges he applied to including one of HYPSM colleges, top UCs and Honors College with a merit money and never returned to CC. Kids at his school with perfect GPA and test scores did not get into any HYPSM schools but still got into pretty good schools on merit scholarships. The adcom who graduated from Yale told us he liked my kid’s essays and he thought our kid had good chances to get into other top colleges had he applied.

GPA and test scores do not show personalities or interesting human aspects of applicants. As long as adcoms are humans, they will pick the applicants with whom they connect.

Mine know about this site because they know I look at it a lot, but I have told them I don’t think it’s for them (and they show no interest in it). They have always enjoyed what they do for the sake of doing it, they are naturally intellectually curious, and they pursue extracurriculars they genuinely enjoy. I worry that if they get on here, they will start feeling stressed or start thinking they have to do things they don’t really want to do in order to get into a good college. I want them to continue to do what they do for the sake of doing it, not because they think it will help them get into x, y, or z. I also want to make sure they fully realize there are a TON of great schools out there and maybe their best fit isn’t an Ivy or a top 20 (or maybe it is, who knows, but I want the fit to be honest and not based on what they think they SHOULD want…that’s important to me, that the process be fun, honest, and genuine, and not crazy stressful and filled with angst). Maybe they could navigate this site and be just fine and maybe I’m being overprotective in that sense. I look at the chance threads and feel sorry for those kids who feel they HAVE to get into an Ivy, etc. though. Things are good the way they are with my two so far, and I want to keep it that way. So while I think CC is a wonderful and informative site for many reasons, I worry (perhaps unnecessarily) that the forums might not be the best thing for my kids. Again though, maybe I’m being a bit overprotective. If they wanted to hang out here then I wouldn’t try to stop them. I’m just kind of glad they don’t.