Enough!

College Search & Selection
1

<p>(Now that I have your attention)</p>

<p>PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND ALL THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD....HEAR ME OUT!</p>

<p>Enough, enough, ENOUGH! Enough shirking your responsibility, enough of becoming dependent on other people, enough of not asserting your beliefs, of not trusting in your ability to make choices, and enough of losing faith in your ability to do what is right. </p>

<p>Most of you are either between the ages of seventeen and nineteen, you will soon graduate from high school, and many of you have just been granted the once in a lifetime opportunity to study for the first time independently, many of you miles and miles away from your parents, your old teachers, the traditional people who tell you what to do and how to conduct your life. </p>

<p>Now is your chance! Now is your chance to make your own decisions, ones that you make because you feel strongly about how you want to live and what you want to become in the very near future. All of you must find this to be important. If this is true, then why do so many of you seem to haplessly depend on the opinions of others to make your choices about where you should go to college? Wouldn't you feel more mature, more fulfilled, more assertive and more in control of your life if you did the research, if you made the phone calls, if you observed and took notes and made choosing the place where you will utilize all that you have learned so far to carve your own future?</p>

<p>STOP with the versus threads and try doing the research yourself!
Make your own opinions. Make a phone call, visit the campuses, arrange a phone interview with a student via the admissions office (most schools do this), compare programs and majors, compare facilities and tuition and even ask college students on CC what they think. As far as I see it, versus threads are absolutely useless and detrimental to your understanding of BOTH colleges being compared. They will never be objective, each post will be biased, and you will never get a straight answer. </p>

<p>There is no way you could possibly think that Stanford and Duke are the same if you have done anywhere near the amount of research you should have. Who cares which school people who haven't worked in a permanent job before think a Goldman Sachs recruiter would find more favorable? How in the world would you know that?</p>

<p>This is an important decision for all of us is it not? Don't relegate such an important matter to complete strangers who have no idea who you are, where you come from, and what you aspire to be. College is about becoming a competent adult, and here is where you can make that glorious start.</p>

<p>Please, I encourage you to ask each other questions about all aspects of college, this is what this website is all about, but do not give into dependency and laziness. You will only be depriving yourself if something somebody says here ends up being entirely untrue. </p>

<p>Thank you all for your time here on College Confidential.</p>

2

<p>applause...applause, Jan Michael! i've tried to say this before, and got an unfavorable response, so good luck to you!</p>

3

<p>" * Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener but only the soil of the plants that grow in him * ."</p>

<ul>
<li>Friedrich Nietzsche</li>
</ul>

4

<p>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^</p>

5

<p>I feel honored for you to make a thread yelling at my thread (Stanford versus Duke). </p>

<p>Fortunately, this wonderful free country of ours allows me to ask whichever question I deem most helpful to me, everyone connected to the world wide web gets to tell me exactly what they think, I get to absorb all the comments they have to offer (notice I asked them to give me a reason why they liked once school over the other), and then on May 1st, I get to mail off a reply card to each university that accepted me.</p>

6

<p>Er, as much as all the versus threads annoy me, I can see some of them actually want to see new perspectives on the colleges. But I assume they know they must take information with a grain of salt.</p>

<p>UCLAri made a post about this, except he was more patient. People haven't heeded his words, and I daresay they won't heed yours, either. Good try, though.</p>

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<p>oracle, it is that same free country that allows me to criticize your methods and tell you that not only are you wasting your time, you are subjecting yourself to volumes of misinformation.</p>

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<p>As for you kyledavid80, I'm sorry, but patience is not my style. I also am a bit fiery, but it shouldn't dissuade you from my message.</p>

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<p>Sadly, such seemingly impulsive ardor can destroy your message altogether. Essence can go only as far as style.</p>

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<p>This isn't the declaration of independence chap.</p>

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<p>I'm simply saying: people are going to write you off because you affect an impulsive, perhaps overly critical manner.</p>

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<p>I concur!!!!!!!!!</p>

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<p>What are the "vs" theads if NOT doing research? They're ways of trying to gain information about the schools through other people's knowlege.</p>

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<p>I think of the "vs" threads as being very much like the American justice system. A jury is presented with the arguments of two (hopefully) very skilled lawyers, and all the evidence that they can produce. The idea isn't for the jury to believe everything that each side presents; rather, you hope that this system will ensure that all the relevant arguments are presented for the jury to make its own decision about. I doubt you'd criticize a jury for not just making up its own mind about who's guilty without hearing any arguments first.</p>

<p>Of course the two situations are different. There isn't much control over what kind of information, true or false, can be put forward into these threads. Students need to understand that the decision is ultimately theirs, and be willing to defy the majority of posters if necessary. However, simply asking for alternative perspectives and new information is never a bad thing for someone trying to make a decision, as long as this board isn't the only place where the do it.</p>

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<p>JP2249 i definitely agree </p>

<p>tokyo..i don't think i'm waisting my time or getting "volumes of misinformation"
Anything that is false is usually caught by another cc and cc is valuable tool, time well spent</p>

16

<p>I am from overseas, and though I was lucky enough to visit the two colleges I am debating between, I had very little time at each and could only make a campus tour before I had to fly off to someplace else. I got to see the campuses but I hardly got the "feel" of the campus nor did I get to sit in on a class or stay overnight. Part of "research" and making your own decision is asking others for advice. In no way do I think that the two schools I'm deciding between are identical, but it is their equal share of pros and cons and the idea that either choice will lead to an utterly different experience that make the decision difficult. Do not blame these kids for being scared of choosing where they are going to spend the next four years of their life and of which the experience they will never be able to forget whether or not they enjoyed it. It's a scary decision indeed - probably the biggest decision any 18 year old ever has to make - and I think it would be unwise not to ask other people for outside advice and perspectives (pardon the double negative). And of course advice is always biased! Probably the only unbiased information is the statistics, and it would just be dumb to base your decision solely on that. I don't think anyone is asking someone else to make their decision for them, but rather is trying to gather as much information from as many sources as possible.</p>

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<p>I understand that many students cannot visit campuses and whatnot, but I am reading these "Versus threads" and people are not getting good feedback. The posts are very impulsive and they are not asking questions that are specific to their needs and educational aspirations. Much of the time, people are not asking good questions about college. There are plenty of good threads on CC where people are asking good questions and getting good answers. ** Thus, I am not blaming users of College Confidential for asking their peers for advice. ** What I am saying is that versus threads are not getting students good answers. Prospective students need to be smarter when they ask their CC peers for advice about college, and that is the bottom line.</p>

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<p>I agree with tokyorevelation. Most of the college A vs College B threads are too general and indicate that the student has done no research on their own. Most threads seem plain lazy.</p>

<p>It's different when a students says, "I think that the positives of College A are.... and its negatives are....and the positives and negatives of B are. Do any of you have any other insights?" Those threads invite responses because they seem as if the person is truly asking for additional information, not asking others to do all of the work.</p>

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<p>Soz, I thought this as well when I first saw all those thread on what I felt ppl who could not be bothered to make their own research were making. But I KNOW how HARD it is to decide college choice when you think about all the courses and university choices you have. In the UK, it's hard enough to make a choice with the limited amount of Unis we have compared to the States. Now if you though of the UK as one state, and it's so hard to make a choice. Imagine how hard it is for people to decide a uni choice that is NOT state regulated like in the UK where we thanksfully have UCAS, but on your own? and times your possible choices for uni/colleges by 50? It's all very well if you know what you want to do with your life, but many people who have specific careers in mind, themselves find it hard. Imagine for somone who has absolutely no idea?</p>

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<p>Again, I'm not accusing everyone, I'm just saying that people could ask better questions, even questions that aren't related to majors or professional schools or careers. Whats the social life like? How is the academic schedule, what are the graduation requirements, are the academics very rigid or quite flexible? Is school spirit strong at X college? What services are available to help students? Is tutoring available? The list of good questions goes on and on, and yet I hardly see this in versus threads.</p>