<p>I think the parents’ forum is usually fascinating and very helpful. The obsession some parents have with prestige and the constant “which school ranks higher?” discussion can be depressing.</p>
<p>I like the “anxiety” diagnosis. For me, CC is a pressure relief valve. I didn’t come here soon enough, but luckily everything worked out for DD (we stumbled through it - and sometimes its better to be “lucky” than “good”).</p>
<p>I have learned; that I will take a different path for DS’15. We won’t go through this again, or “press our luck.” Kids can be influenced, and even-though he’s a great student? I’m going to expose him to CC (that’s “Community College” :eek:) and transfer options to keep the selection process sane, and overall affordable. Our instate Colleges and Universities have collaborated on a guaranteed transfer program where they’ll establish a curriculum guaranteed to be accepted, for full credit, for 60+ credits, that can be accomplished in 18 months at any instate CC. There is a way to game the system, if you plan far enough ahead.</p>
<p>I think my time here has been sobering, not just regaring where my S13 falls academically but also regarding the attitudes expressed by people when given the anonymity of the internet. But for the most art, it’s been very eye opening and I’m grateful to have found this site when I did.</p>
<p>I have learned so much from the parents forum. I wish I had known about it sooner. We got nothing from our h.s. gc, so most of the info and reality checks we learned about colleges were from the CC. </p>
<p>What has been more difficult was sort of a love-hate relationship as acceptance dates drew near on the other forums. It was difficult hearing about likely letters that other students received. Checking these forums both fueled and relieved my anxiety. Overall, though, the parents forum has been great.</p>
<p>I think CC has been hugely enlightening and has helped to manage expectations. I really feel for my daughter’s classmates and their parents who undoubtedly were not on CC. One got into all or nearly all the schools to which she applied – but none of them offered sufficient money for her to attend. Obviously, she didn’t apply to financial safeties, and she should have aimed for schools that offer tons of merit money. Another friend is still waiting on some financial aid packages. Her mother is completely weighed down by her own massive grad school debt which has an interest rate of something like 8.9%. And another, whose parents are both teachers, was accepted into Tisch at NYU, her <em>dream school</em>, and we all know what that means in terms of her financial aid package.</p>
<p>It is different things for different families. Ideally the right person finds it at the perfect time for their family. Sometimes it students, sometimes it’s a parent. The window is wider for some than it is for others.</p>
<p>I don’t read the threads about elite schools or super-accomplishments, but on most other matters I’ve found a very thoughtful and non-competitive group of people posting here. More interested in the general life issues raised mostly in the parent cafe.</p>
<p>I didn’t find CC until DS was a junior. Fortunately I had heard from others who had been through the process and I did a lot of initial research on my own. After finding CC and the HS 2011 parents thread, I was amazed at all of the mutual assistance and support everyone provided each other. In summary,this site has been very helpful and will continue to be for our DD 2014.</p>
<p>I have had my a$$ saved by the CC parents’ forum. Without the valuable advice here, we would not have known about the “hidden gem” schools that are out there, wouldn’t have known about which schools offer more merit aid, wouldn’t have known much of anything at all.</p>
<p>It has still been stressful and anxiety provoking but even so, I would have been spinning my wheels or doing nothing at all to be prepared without the CC parents board. Love it!</p>
<p>Not depressing – I think you hear both the joys and the sorrows – but very helpful. Lots of knowledgeable parents. Occasionally some folks who can’t think very well have a habit of getting to arguments about things, but their weak logic means that those arguments are not particularly enlightening to anyone. But, generally, I’ve found well-informed, intelligent people who give useful advice.</p>
<p>Depressing? No. I find “CC Parents Forum” more akin to Lake Wobegon where “…all the children are above average” (or at least their parents so claim).</p>
<p>In fact, I find most of the “CC Forums” more like Garrison Keillor’s idyllic locale, where everyone tends to overestimate their capabilities, income and SAT scores. In between the nuggets of information I find in the “Financial Aid” and “College Search” forums–things like lists of schools offering merit aid, schools with rolling admissions, links to articles on education, etc.–most of the comments are pure bunk. Sorry to be so curt.</p>
<p>It’s not the fault of “CC Forums” in general. It’s more the fault of any platform which allows anonymous posts from people who believe if they post often enough and write long enough they’ll come to be considered an “expert” by other posters and curtesied to by them (“oh, _____ is SO right on this point!!!”).</p>
<p>Remember Andrew Ferguson? He wrote a book called “Crazy U,” published a year or so ago, detailing his son’s trip through the dizzying college admission process. Ferguson’s book was almost universally panned in comments here on various “CC Forums” since he dared to question any advice offered here on something so important as college selection and admission by posters using handles like “puppywuppy14.” But Ferguson was, and is, right. </p>
<p>Not depressing, no; just repetitive, and inflated. In the “Financial Aid” forum, where I spend perhaps 10 minutes each evening trying to find maybe another avenue to search for financial aid for my college-bound daughter (who’s above average, of course), the posters have fallen into a pattern of being long-winded and saying nothing, condescending (“really, that much debt? are you crazy?”), family historians (“well, my cousin’s second wife went to MIT and just today told me she found that calculus there was s-o-o-o easy…”) and the plain nosey (“what’s your EFC? how much does your family earn? what’s your SAT score? what’s your dress size? are you an alien?”). And of course there are several posters who never fail to comment without telling us about daughter Missy’s “awesome” financial aid award last year at Fantastic U. when answering a poster’s question, no matter what the question might be.</p>
<p>Depressing? Again, no; there are a few posters who seem genuinely interested in helping others by passing along useful information and have yet to tell us about their exceptional offspring. But it seems these forums often turn into an echo chamber: interesting and informative the first time you read/hear it, incredibly repetitive thereafter. How many times do we need a repeat of “Harvard or Yale? My son needs help deciding!!!” Puhleeze.</p>
<p>(For the record, I am not related to “puppywuppy14” nor do I know this poster’s identity. But I’m sure his/her kids are above average.)</p>
<p>^Where’s the Like button?</p>
<p>^Its right under the repetitious and sour grapes button</p>
<p>DennyAlaska – Like!</p>
<p>It is depressing for me. I feel like a failure sending my child to CC but it is a reality and sometimes reality is depressing. I am hoping though that I can get some good information for my daughter. She is so upset we can hardly discuss CC without everyone in our house crying. That is reality now though. IF you are not super rich or lucky enough to have saved for college, this is your new reality.</p>
<p>“lucky enough to have saved for college”?? There is not much luck in th process of saving for college. It just requires sacrifice from the moment the little bundle of joy is born: skip the huge SUVs and new cars, granite re-modeling, expensive coiffs, and vacations.</p>
<p>For the families with incomes under $60 K, the top schools will pay for all tuition and room and board.</p>
<p>Tmom – CC is NOT failure, and please don’t think that. I know some very intelligent students who’ve gone to CC and transferred after two years. They went because it was so much less expensive, and they were the kinds of people who were conscientious enough not to lay a large debt on their parents. Starting at CC rather than going into debt is a SMART financial decision, not to mention that some CC degrees are marketable in any economy.</p>
<p>I have to wonder how insecure the people are who start the “Harvard or Yale? I just can’t decide” threads. I also wonder how many of them are actually who they represent themselves as being.</p>
<p>Do you know what I’m most concerned about? Not that my children go to the top, prestigious schools (so I can brag?), but that they have happy, productive lives and are good to others. It’s taken me years to come to that understanding, but as I’ve seen a few of my friends grieve over sick and dying children, I’ve come to realize that there are so many more important things than going to the “right” school. Is your daughter a good person? Will she work hard to achieve her goals wherever she is? If the answers are yes, then you have certainly not failed.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>fauve, “Lucky enough” can mean you were able to earn enough extra to save the serious money needed for college plus you did not take a financial hit due to job loss, significant medical costs, investment losses, or whatever. Granite remodeling and expensive vacations are not even a part of the equation. We were lucky early and saved. Not so lucky now income wise. I can see both sides. There is luck involved.</p>
<p>But, back on topic, CC is not depressing. It does take time and experience here, at least for me, to sift through the opinions and advice to find the nuggets. But they are here to be found.</p>
<p>What some perceive as depressing is schadenfreude for others. It is reassuring to realize that failure to gain admittance to a particular school is not due to some personal defect, but to the vagaries of the college admission process. And CC has been enormously helpful in educating DD to the financial realities of higher education. Based on her research on this web site she came to her own conclusion that attending dream school (NYU) was simply not worth the cost. Hurray for the voices of reason on CC.</p>
<p>Whoa, wait a sec. The only kind of ‘luck’ involved here would be for the parent(s) to be in a field of work that got phased out due to technology, thus a job loss, or a debilitating illness that makes a parent not able to earn an income. That’s bad luck.</p>
<p>Losing money in the market is not luck, it’s a gamble. There were plenty of safe investments when junior was born that earned 5% interest–that would be pretty good now! Not saving for 18 years because ‘you can’t take it with you’, i.e. accumulating big houses, cars, travel–that’s not bad luck, that’s heedlessness. To a certain extent, you make your luck.</p>
<p>BUT, TmomfromOH, don’t feel bad at all because community college is definitely a viable avenue. A good CC with credits that readily transfer to a University is a tremendous value considering how the costs of virtually every other 4-year institution has gone through the roof. As I’ve said before, if I were doing it over again for my D’s–a 2-year CC stint followed by 2-3 years at a state U. would be an option for sure.</p>