Can you believe it’s August?! Summer is almost over, school is almost back in session, and application season has started! With Fall comes one of the first big events on CC - Early Decision application deadlines.
Traditionally, CC users created threads to discuss specific school applications and decisions. This has often resulted in an inconsistent experience for the community:
Some colleges had duplicate threads created for the same discussion
Some colleges never have threads created
Threads could be hard to find (categories and titles varied)
We’ve worked on improving the experience this year to address the decision thread challenges. Each thread about ED/EA and RD should be easy to find on CC, easy to find via search, and easy to participate in as a user. As a result:
Starting this year, the CC admins (including yours truly) will create the Early Decision, Early Action, and Regular Decision discussion threads for each college.
It is no small task to create and maintain these decision threads, so for those who have created these threads in the past, a huge thank you for all your hard work and diligence. We’ll take it from here.
How will this work?
As we approach application deadlines for ED, EA, and RD, we’ll pre-create threads for each school that has a date coming up. All threads will have a similar title like this:
<school> + <app type> + for Fall 2022 Admissions
Examples:
University of Tampa Early Action for Fall 2022 Admissions
Lehigh University Early Decision for Fall 2022 Admissions
Each thread will be tagged with early-decision or early-action, official and the school name (e.g lehigh-university) so that it will be easy to find in the forum. All decision threads will be housed in a category called Early Decision/Early Action.
Why is this better?
We’ll include all schools. Even schools without categories on CC deserve a decision thread.
Threads will be easier to find here on CC and on Google.
We can link the different decision threads (ED/EA, RD) to the authoritative college page and ensure there are no duplicate threads
I have a suggestion!
Great! We’re actively looking for feedback on this initiative. Respond below if you have suggestions for these threads or what to include. We’ll be posting the first round of ED threads the week of August 9-13, so I’m sure you’ll have plenty to say after you see the first one.
How do I find a particular college’s ED/EA thread?
I wouldn’t wait till the date comes. People applying EA etc are going to want to ask questions now. You will engage more people the sooner you create the threads… Maybe start with some of the more active college threads and go from there. Engage your base.
The sooner the better. Some schools have beginning of the year (in some cases any day now) meetings between students/parents and counselors in which the EA/ED strategy is formed.
What is the source for the deadline information in these posts? So far, three different posts I’ve checked (Brown, Rice, UVa) have listed ED/EA deadlines that are different from those currently posted on the websites of the various schools.
Is there any way to opt out of all of these threads at once. I’ve spent a bit of time muting the gazzillion that have already been created.
I think these are great for the students and parents of who are applying EA or ED to these schools…but I’m not interested in having them clog up my “latest” list.
There are 3000 colleges…and many have an EA or ED option. Is the plan to do all of these?
Are you also going to be doing the same for rolling admission schools?
Will these ED and EA threads close automatically once the admissions date has passed?
Having worked with software conversions, data imports, etc., I know the challenges one can run up against. This global thread creation was a good idea in theory. Unfortunately, junk in junk out; that paid source database seems suspect. I’ve checked only a handful of the new threads and found multiple errors. This morning I see that Wash & Lee’s ED deadline is November 31!
Hopefully users will cleanup the errors (I will correct the ones I see) but it’s a concern a student will rely on bad info provided by CC. We all know kids don’t always dive into the individual college websites. Does CC want that responsibility? What if a kid assumes the W&L obvious error is a typo that should be November 30 then misses the correct November 1 ED deadline?
I know I wouldn’t want that responsibility or liability. I’d include a link to each college website with instructions to check there for the most up to date information. Food for thought.
ETA: At the very least, consider a CYA statement that instructs applicants to verify information on the actual college website.
There is too much bad information on the imports. Where they are getting the information is correct but the pull over is changing the dates for some reason but other stats are incorrect. I agree with you that just to pull it all down and just go to the school sites and csd for the most up to date information for each school.
No kidding - I now have someone going through all 500 threads, checking the school website, then updating the ED/EA deadlines.
I think having the thread up with good information is still in play this year if we can get it all corrected in the next week. If any of you are willing to help out (since they are all wikis), that would be awesome. Otherwise, we’ll comb through them all and correct the errors.
Unfortunately, junk in junk out; that paid source database seems suspect. I’ve checked only a handful of the new threads and found multiple errors. This morning I see that Wash & Lee’s ED deadline is November 31! 