<p>I understand your perspective-- and I think it's fair in a lot of ways. Yes, a lot of people in these forums (perhaps me included?) need to be taken down a few pegs. And, yes, it makes no sense to give someone false hope, since that might make April's small-envelope-sting all the more painful. I don't have a problem with people being honest or even blunt; I DO have a problem with people giving bad advice, using faulty reasoning (i.e. the black and white "HYPS won't admit a white non-athlete with a 2050" stuff), or omitting important qualifiers-- i.e. notes about the essay's impact, etc. But, yeah, I think we do basically agree in principle. And despite the fact my frustrations with these forums prompted me to post, I do have to admit it's much more civil in here than it is elsewhere in cyberspace. Hooray for polite discourse :)</p>