Hello! I’m Joy, the new Senior Editor of College Confidential. I’m excited to be a part of the passionate and knowledgeable community here at CC, and I wanted to take a minute to introduce myself.
I’m a proud graduate of Kenyon College, where I majored in English and Creative Writing. I was one of the lucky ones who got to watch David Foster Wallace deliver his now-iconic graduation speech “This is Water” for the first time. (It’s a great watch or read if you haven’t heard it before.)
After a few (fun!) years working in book publishing in New York City, I earned a master’s degree in psychology from The New School, and then spent several years as a coach supporting both prospective and enrolled college students with their educational journeys. Over the past few years, I’ve combined my love of writing with my background in higher education by creating content for students and institutions. I’m also mom to two boys, and while they’re not thinking about college YET, I’m excited to pick up some tips from you all along the way.
Our forums are the heart of the CC community, and so now I’d love to hear from you! What brought you to CC and what keeps you coming back? Which college-related topics and questions are top of mind for you? What kind of content do you want to see more (or less) of? I’d love to hear your thoughts or suggestions below.
And if you’re a student, parent, or admissions professional who is interested in being on our list of possible contributors, you can reach me directly at editorial@collegeconfidential.com. Thank you all for being part of this community!
Not much to add as I generally just look for questions where my two cents might matter, but welcome here!
I also still glean from this forum because I’ve been working in our local high school for 20+ years (except this year with Covid) and like to be able to guide students as they find their best path forward. My own guys are done or finally finishing up “school” (last one graduates from med school in 5 weeks - rest graduated from undergrads in the 20teens).
I found CC in starting to do research on athletic recruiting. The CC forum there is seriously the best accumulated advice anywhere – online, in books – anywhere. And the posters there are super knowledgeable and very generous in sharing their advice and perspective.
I love the educated and intelligent parents (and kids!) on CC. There aren’t too many other sites on the internet where there’s such an interesting smart audience, who values education. As a result I really enjoy hearing opinions on all sorts of topics from this group. There are some high flyers on here too, authors, educational consultants, professors, doctors, lawyers etc etc.
What I would like above all is for CC to take every decision with the aim of increasing the (civil) discussion. The discussion and conversation is the lifeblood of CC and it’s been battered in the past year, with the forum change, but also with some decisions, like, e.g. deciding not to allow discussion of COVID19 which is only the single biggest issue of the past 100 years and which affects every one of us. Other message boards I sometimes read somehow had no problem navigating COVID (and these boards are moderated too).
Hmmm… say more about this… do we not have COVID-specific threads for folks to discuss? I know we shut down a specific (extremely contentious) thread, but did we just drive people to other sites to discuss?
I’m open to revisiting some of these decisions, as long as it doesn’t violate ToS and doesn’t drive our mods to the brink of insanity.
Edit: (and I just hijacked Joy’s intro thread! Sorry Joy). I’ll start a new thread about this in the Cafe.
I am referring to that contentious thread that the moderators had trouble with. Shutting it down coincided with CC’s numbers dropping fyi. And absolutely you lost posters who migrated to private groups and other sites, 100%.
That thread was to discuss the latest developments/research etc and I found it was the single best news aggregator (with commentary) out there. Better than the NY Times, CNN etc.
@CC_Mike please (please!!) take a look at other message boards, that have the same rules of civility and no politics, and see what they did to navigate COVID. I referred @ccadminjon to The Chronicle of the Horse forums as a great example of what to do. Very analogous to CC in that the overall subject of the forum has nothing to do with COVID or public health, it is moderated, and it also has TOS that requires civility etc. How did they manage to have a robust discussion? (COVID discussions are in the “Off Topic” forum). COTH, as it is known, is the one I’m familiar with, but I expect there are others you can find.
Thanks for the welcome @cinnamon1212! I agree with you about how knowledgeable and generous with time and knowledge the CC group is. I really appreciate hearing from loyal CCers so thanks for sharing your thoughts and insights.
Y’all lost a whole bunch of people, many of whom I still miss.
And it still irritates many of us who stayed when there’s admonishment to “keep threads on track,” etc. Conversation on the Cafe is what many of us like and conversation doesn’t always stay on track. I understand it being different when it’s a college specific (informative) thread, because people search for “x,” but the Cafe should be allowed to be a Cafe IMO. When folks get arguing too much it makes sense to intervene, or if something is blatantly political or derogatory or sales or whatever, but rabbit trails are part of life when we’re mainly chatting.
Sure! I’m happy to explain a bit about my role as Senior Editor. My role is not to moderate forums but to create content for our guidance/ articles and other sections that reflects what the CC community wants to learn about and discuss. One of my goals is to more closely align our forum topics with the articles and other types of content we are creating. We are going to be creating some new types of content and features, including:
We’d also love to feature more student voices, so reach out to editorial@collegeconfidential.com if you’re interested in being a contributor! And I’m always open to hearing thoughts about what kind of content you’d like to see on CC.
Welcome! My daughter is a freshman at Kenyon, and she absolutely loves it.
I lurked on the forum quite a bit last year, during her application process–it was very helpful for me, since I only did graduate school in the US, never went to college here (and my US-born husband only applied to one college, so not much experience there either :)) We were fortunate to have an amazing guidance counselor at my daughter’s high school, but still, reading the forum helped me navigate the process better (the guidance counselor was pleasantly surprised that I knew the difference between merit and need-based aid and what it entails :)). I joined the forum this past fall, because I felt we learned a lot during the application process last year, especially as far as LACs are concerned, and I’ve been also giving feedback on Kenyon here :). Besides, I’m a professor at a large state university, so I work in higher education and can offer occasional advice. I don’t post here too much, because of time constraints, but I read the forum quite a bit and find it very helpful.
One tendency I’ve noticed–some users tend to put schools in boxes/categories (“a party school,” “a school for rich kids,” “a school strong in STEM”, “a less liberal school”, etc.). While some general stereotypes might hold, the reality is much more mixed and complex (e.g., my university is more known for STEM, but we have amazing programs in the humanities and social sciences, but they’re overshadowed by the STEM reputation of the school, and the latter is what people tend to associate it with). So, perhaps, more materials that reflect that complexity would be welcome.
I’m a parent who lurked for a year before joining when my D was a HS senior. She’s a college junior now and I stay to answer questions primarily about her college and my alma mater.
I was more active in the past but have also migrated to a different forum because of the heavy handed moderation.
I like your content ideas. If they could reflect the common questions we see here year after year, it would be nice to be able to link to those articles
Welcome to CC! Looking forward to the content and please let me know if there’s anything you need help with. I can offer in depth knowledge on UCLA and the UC college admissions process.
