<p>I'm pretty sure they tell you this in the long agreement that you didn't read before signing up for a College Confidential account, but please don't your personal information here -- or anyone else's. (This includes using your real life name or someone else's name.)</p>
<p>And don't post information that personally identifies you.</p>
<p>Most people get that far, but many students -- especially when it comes to chances threads -- don't appreciate this next part.</p>
<p>Please don't post information here that will identify you when coupled with information that people (such as Admissions Offices) have from other sources.</p>
<p>When you post details about your grades and ECs, there may very well be a person lurking on this forum who has your admission folder on hand who recognizes some peculiar fact and realizes that that's you! Okay, so maybe that's not so bad...considering the folder already has all that information in it. But do you really want that person searching your other posts here? What might they see? Maybe there was that time you were up way past bedtime and couldn't spell your way out of a wet paper bag. Or how about the time where -- just because you hadn't yet gone on visits -- posted that you're not really so interested in Exover Academy. Just as perilously, you might have posted you were in love with Exover Academy...which might not impress the people over at Deerkiss School who were perusing this forum.</p>
<p>And then there's the problem of how you post going forward once you've (potentially) given an admissions office enough information to tell who you are. Because, once you're at that place, you have to assume that they're looking over your shoulder for all your future posts here. And if you want to ask a question about some other school you're interested in...or if you want to ask a question about a school that you need to ask here because it would be rude to ask them directly...you might not feel free to do so. Or, if you do go ahead and ask, it may not be such a wise choice. You may look back and think, "Oh, well, D'yer's nuts because I wouldn't mind an admissions office seeing anything that I've posted here." But can you say that with certainty about the things you will be posting here in the future? And do you want to be constrained in your interaction here by that prospect?</p>
<p>If you must post a chances thread or talk about details of your admissions experience, I encourage you to alter the facts to conceal your identity: </p>
<p>-- We don't need to know the exact times and places of your interviews. If you tell us that it occurred sometime during the month of October (even if it was in September or this week), there's no harm in that.</p>
<p>-- We don't need to know exactly where you live. If you live in another town or a different state even, that's okay, it won't change the advice you get here (and, if it does change our advice, it's not like our advice can get any more misleading than it would be if you gave us precise and accurate information).</p>
<p>-- We don't need to know the details of special accomplishments, especially if these are things that really stand out and will be facts that an admission officer would be likely to recall about you. Generalities work fine for us.</p>
<p>Alter the facts a little. I have no idea if any current admission officers visit this board, so I don't know that they'd invest the time and go to the trouble of doing searches here to gather more information about you. But I believe that that's a real possibility. And there's just no need for us to receive insanely accurate details about you even if the risk of it being matched up to your admission folder is negligible.</p>