does anyone find the main site's (not the forum) "elite college" branding laughable?

College Confidential Community
1

I’ll be proud to say that I got into my colleges because of CC (except the looking for safeties part, which was my fault – what a close shave!), because the forums here are populated by a sharp and intelligent community. But I almost forget what an embarrassment to common sense the main site is, well, until the forum notification in gmail also pops up a related google ad on CollegeConfidential’s “elite college” help, with no reference to its extremely useful forums.

Now, I mean no disrespect to the site owners, because I am quite grateful for the CC forum community they made possible. Though maybe since a domestic fallout seven years ago pushed my family into the lower-income bracket I’ve been out of touch with the tastes of the upper middle class, but the advertisements seem to give an impression of, “Well, if you pay advisors enough money, you can game the admissions process…”

Now maybe the kind of people who would be willing to pay 89 dollars for a stats eval (I’m not sure how much difference professional college counselling makes versus just using the CC forums to guide you as you go) happen to be the main source of revenue for the site, along with the hundreds or thousands of dollars it takes to go from a “diagnostic” to an “attack plan” with expensive essay or get-off-the-waitlist help. But the business model right now that CC seems to be using would be the best only if the site owners think that, I don’t know, 90% of the students and parents visiting this site are the shallowest, most prestige-seeking people ever. I suspect that meanwhile, the ads’ impertinent language, are turning a good deal many people off. I almost forgot that when I came across this site via google, how much I got turned off by the main site the first time.

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I think CC offers both options - plenty of information for those who have the time (and little $$) to research the admissions process and advising for those who don’t have the time or inclination to do the work themselves. People choose to hire college admissions counselors for many reasons, and CC is definitely not the only counseling service available - there are many, many counselors out there. But they are generous enough to provide this forum for those of us doing our own research.

3

Time is a valid excuse to invest in consulting (opportunity cost!) but it seems to me that the style of advertising Collegeconfidential puts up in the forums for its services would be out of touch with most users. While there are many counselling services out there, few other sites are as successful as a centralised discussion forum for the college process as Collegeconfidential. It just seems to me that the tastes of most of the forum community have evolved to the extent that the style of advertising that CC pursues on its ain site seems at least quite quirky.