Great resource for me. Don’t have much use for the “What are my Chances” threads, but I have learned tons otherwise. Was initially overwhelmed with finding a school for S1, but the ability to do “feel” research here is second to none.
Ironically, S1 chose to go to one of the few schools I knew something about before all the investigation.
College Confidential is responsible for my home renovation! I followed the “Flip This House” threads over the last few years, and contacted @coralbrook for an estimate when we were in the planning stages. Fast forward six months, and we live in a wonderful new space 
I agree with this (elguapo1). The whole process is ridiculous. We sent our US daughter to McGill for that reason. She had the numbers so why jump through hoops and its honestly been similarly priced to an in state public college. My son applied to one school and was accepted in 3 weeks through the rolling admissions process and didn’t apply to any others.
One downside I see about CC is that I come here for Info. And I get that info but have to sift through too many posts asking if they should take the SAT again despite very high scores or similar type posts. Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t feel that its that big of a question. If you are smart enough to get a good score, you are smart enough to know whether you should invest the $50 to take it again. To me these posts are mostly just ego-driven vanity posts and don’t serve any other valid purpose.
What i like is when people are willing to come on and post their stats when they get rejected from a school. That takes a little more courage and self confidence and is genuinely helpful when we are wondering what will happen to our kid.
Outside of that, I don’t have 10,000 plus posts so I am not active here, but I did find useful info mining through the individual school-of-interest sub forums.
CC made me realize what merit was out there. I perused the full tuition/full ride thread, not finding anything that suited us there, but inspiring me to do a thorough search for good auto merit closer to home.
And, as so many have said, it’s a place to obsess without showing it to family. When I’m into something, I obsess over online research- planning vacations, shopping for prom…right now it is finding an affordable place for DD’19!
Have not read this whole thread, but CC has now helped me through 2 successful college application cycles. My third and final one is about 5 years away and I’ll be back then, I’m sure. I’d say the only time I felt really stressed out by this site was early in DD1’s process when I came across one of the old-timers here who made me feel terrible about our need to take loans beyond the small federal ones. In our area, even modest public schools cost much, much more than that, and although we had some money saved, it just wasn’t enough. I was freaking out that maybe my kids would never get to go to college… but then over time, on various threads, I saw that this poster was always popping up with comments along the lines of “40k is too much debt for a kid getting a nursing degree” and I realized that the poster was either someone from a vastly different area than I, salary/COL-wise (the average RN salary in my state is 77k and there is a nursing shortage)… or maybe just kind of a bossy person who, while perhaps genuinely trying to be helpful, doesn’t know nearly as much as she thinks she does. LOL. Glad I stayed to learn from people with all different points of view!
I’ve been here seven years. I started out on the prep school forum and have met some wonderful people both virtually and in real life. This board helped me through the BS years (still can’t type that acro without laughing at its accuracy) when our only child left home for boarding school at 14 and never really returned. When he chose the military for college, I wandered over to the (non-CC) service academy forum for insight, but those people are not my herd, so I stay here mostly for the camaraderie and to provide any help I can give or laughs I can share. I try not to beat up on the kids too much. 
I keep saying it’s time to go, but then I learn about the life-changing Instant Pot, how much I need to retire (and when), which movies to watch/books to read, how to purge my house a bag at a time, and how badly dressed I am, so how can I leave this special place that enables me to get it off my chest and brag without repercussion? My kid thinks this site is full of possible serial killers and rolls his eyes every time I mention CC, but I feel pretty safe here and have no current plans to leave.
(BTW: If any of you ARE serial killers, I highly recommend the “Say it here cause you can’t say it directly- the get it off your chest thread.”)
Related: “your kid should go to [fine, huge university in ruby-red state in the deep south that gives generous merit for good-not-great stats] because it’s the absolute cheapest option.” My kids are NYC-born, very liberal, atheist, football-and-frat-hating kids who wanted LACs [one is also gay], and it would simply have been a disaster to try to force them to go to one of those schools. Fit is just as important as finances, imo, because what I most wanted to avoid was a transfer situation that would remove all possibility of financial aid. Our compromise involves kids probably living at home and commuting within the NYC area for the first job, thus saving a whole lot of rent and grocery money. Clearly not something that would work for everyone, but my kids very happily agreed to it in order to go to the schools of their choice. My husband’s siblings did this, too, so it’s nothing new.
Just completed 2 applications cycles over the last two years. Both years we relied heavily on knowledge gained using CC. The major-specific section I didn’t come across until the second year (for D2). And the Nursing section including listing of direct entry Nursing schools proved invaluable. I gave back as well by posting stats, decisions and any merit for each school and by answering questions if we knew the answers. Thanks!
CC has proven invaluable throughout the entire process for our family. Among the highlights:
Perhaps the biggest game-changer was learning about TASP. It was truly a transformative educational and social experience for my daughter – one that helped her tremendously in realizing what she wanted her college experience to be. It sowed the seeds for what she later decided to study and helped her develop as a scholar and as a person.
We learned about both institutional and outside merit scholarships.
We were able to construct a solid list of reaches, matches, and safeties.
I am grateful for the community and for the opportunity to “pay it forward” a bit by sharing some of the insights that I have gained as a result of being on here.
I have enjoyed – and I believe have become pretty good at – editing essays, and helping students tell their stories. I haven’t quite figured out how I might parlay this into a full or part time job at some point, but in the meantime, I have gotten great pleasure from working with students, talking to parents, sharing experiences, commiserating etc., etc.
I’ve gotten some great recommendations for books for my book club, for TV shows to binge-watch, and for everything from shopping to entertainment.
Invaluable is the word. I learned of deadlines we would have missed, had I not been lurking. Thanks to one very kind and helpful cc’er, I recently learned of an honors program at one of my S’s options; he promptly applied, got accepted, and who knows? Maybe that will be a game-changer, too.
As others have said, the unhelpful piece are the frequently unhinged “Chance Me” threads–with non-admissions people, presumably, weighing in on the fates of people they’ve never laid eyes on, whose applications they haven’t read. Also, the tippy-top-stats-posting (plus 84 off-the-charts ECs) for what sometimes reads like disingenuous reasons, can leave lesser mortals to think they won’t get accepted anywhere, which is entirely not the case. It can be hard on CC to stay in one’s own lane, run one’s own race.
But the positives way outweigh the negatives. We’ve been helped immeasurably, and I am moved by the many fine people who come here to share their information and perspective.
CC is the virtual paper bag I breath into when I am left gasping at this ardourous college admissions dance.
@jmdrmomma Is it a school specific question you posted? If so, I’ve noticed that sometimes it helps to ask the question in the college specific forum. It’s also possible that no one knows the answer :(. Maybe try bumping up the question?
Besides all the pros and cons already mentioned by others, I really appreciated hearing differing viewpoints on various issues. I think I live within a small bubble of a community, and it’s been helpful to gain a broader view.
I enjoy looking at “Latest Posts” and agree that the “What are my Chances” threads clogs this up. Rather than chancing individuals, I think the threads for individual colleges where kids post their stats and other info and whether they were accepted/denied/WL is tremendously helpful. Maybe the CC formatting could be changed to make those threads stand out more?
One game changer from a non CC source. My kid entered some essay contest which if he won he would be guaranteed a summer high school internship spot at Stanford student newspaper. He didn’t win, but I encouraged my kid to contact the staff at Stanford Univ student newspaper and ask for a chance anyway. Lo and behold this staff looked upon this shy freshman kindly and he got the internship. His experience there shifted his perspectives in a very positive ways.
I didn’t realize utilize CC for selections of college. My kids were very easy about picking colleges. Son applied to 6 colleges, 3 in state (NC) and 3 out of state. He got into 5 of the schools and needed him to pick in state. He picked, committed and done!! Daughter only wanted to go to one instate school, applied, accepted and got in done!!
What I learnt on CC is how many people take time out of there lives to help students achieve their dreams. I look at alot of the threads and the knowledge for many different subjects is amazing. From financial aid to details of the schools.
I have also posted threads myself and got very good advise. MY Favorite site is “Say it here thread” I could fill that up daily
When my daughter was applying we were in the hunt for merit. She had pretty much completed her applications but it was reassuring to discover CC to learn that our hunt approach was on the right track. It was a long year of shifting sands, first acceptance on early October, last at the very end of March, scholarships increasing in relative impact on the bottom line as the months passed. Then a few days before committing to one school with a sizable discount, an unexpected phone call from an admissions officer offering a ful tuition competitive scholarship at a school she really wanted but didn’t dare say was her #1.
Also not being Facebook ot Twitter people, CC was great for finding out when and keeping track of notification dates.
I think this site is most helpful with the information about paying for this beast called a college education. There are some people who have so much knowledge and are great at injecting reality. I have seen cool threads where the regulars in the know about financing have seriously helped a poster quickly regroup and get a more realistically affordable option within days. It’s impressive.
What I don’t find helpful are endless discussions about the value of prestige, and chance me threads. But I get the feeling (and I am venturing a guess here) that this website may have been birthed by parents who wanted to maximize their children’s chance of getting into prestigious schools, and there seem to be a lot of adult posters who went to prestigious schools themselves, so the prestige thing is part of CC culture. Like any site like this, it’s easy to avoid topics that don’t interest me.
I came looking for info about a specific school. And was fascinated by the window into other ways of thinking about so many things – parenting and academics, but also vacations, clothes, jobs, kitchens And then Life Happened and this was the only safe place to talk, and people knew things I didn’t. About horrible jobs. About ADHD, mental illness, failure, perserverance, victory.
Not to be sappy, but many of you here have made the difference through some pretty scary life-events. I think when we react with kindness and compassion, there’s a real ability to help.
Do not have words to describe, too many ways, lots of caring and informative individuals
It was very helpful for myself and my D. I just wish I had discovered it a year earlier to avoid some of the mistakes we made in our initial research. I’m still amazed at some of the schools we knew nothing about and would have likely at least done some investigating…University of Rochester and St. Olaf are two of them.
Although (as I already posted) CC has been immeasurably helpful and now is such a part of my life that I may spend the rest of my life lurking in the Parent Café, I would have to say that the one thing that was not-quite-helpful was the typical perspective shared here on financial aid. I think most parents on CC make quite a lot of money, so those who still do not have enough to pay for college are generally looking for merit scholarships for their kids and/or at public universities. So, although I learned the concept of colleges that meet need on CC, for which I am everlastingly grateful, I don’t see that option mentioned as often as I would expect when parents are sharing advice and opinion. Without need-based aid, I guess my kids would be going to Pitt (not a bad outcome) and ending up with huge debt (a terrible outcome and probably a very common scenario where I live). People just starting out need to know that there is another way. It is by no means guaranteed, but it is worth throwing one’s hat in the ring.