Do you think that the new company planted posters in the forums? I noticed about a month ago a couple of posters with an unusual posting history. I couldn’t tell if it was the student or parent and they were all over the place. There were multiple provocative discussions started and stoked. They seemed to be baiting people. The tell to me was that there were two posters that consistently agreed, liked, and found helpful each other’s posts. When you checked either of their previous posts typically the only poster to react was the other. If there were multiple posters who reacted, the posting partner would be no where to be found. Every. Single. Post… had the other poster reacting in some way. I thought it was one poster with multiple accounts but now think they could be planted to drive views, clicks, and traffic.
@bamamom2021 yes. Something is squirrelly. There are also new posters that spend 90%+ of their time in the parent cafe. And one professes to be a high schooler… But writes like an adult (you can tell from syntax). And was active on the home improvement thread “for the future”. Umm, what high schooler is thinking about home improvement? Yeah, no.
I just know it’s not easy to go here anymore. I glance at one or two threads to see if there’s anything new and then I move on. Very sad – I’ve been a constant and frequent poster since 2006, and I just don’t see how that will continue with the new format. I will miss the people at CC very much. 
Anyone else ever get annoyed with questions about a school that can be easily googled? Like being self reliant is a big skill in college. Some of the questions I get that I don’t know off the top of my head, I go to my good friend google and find the answer and report back here.
Perhaps posting is down due to the new redesign, but it’s also possible the site is experiencing a natural drop-off due to the timing, just as families take off for summer vacations. Website admins usually plan any sort of relaunch for times when traffic is normally low. How people are experiencing the new site does seem to be dependent on the device, system, and browser used. I’m not experiencing many of the problems other people are reporting. It’s clear a lot of people are frustrated and it would be unfortunate if longtime posters with experience to share stopped visiting CC due to the redesign.
@lucyvanpelt, we do occasionally see posters where something is definitely off. Their posts tend to be highly correlated with school vacation schedules. Spring break hits and all of a sudden we have posters claiming to be 3.0 students heading to Harvard or kids with the syntax and grammar of middle schoolers asking questions as adults in the Parents Forum. I wouldn’t necessarily assume it’s a plot to drive up traffic or post counts. (And no, I don’t work for CC; I’ve just been here for a long time and seen the cycle repeated in multiple years!)
I moved my first thread since the update today, pls on mobile make the list of threads we can move a thread to alphabetical. Took me forever to find the right one.
Exactly. The forums are what make CC helpful. The info in the articles is available in many other places. If the forums die, so will this site.
On the complaint thread, one poster did compare prior usage to current. It’s not just summer. This is usually the time when more kids freak about essays and some of us keep telling them they have time to tweak ECs or etc. I’m trying not to be paranoid, but there seems to be a lot of snarky kids right now.
It’s almost like every new iteration of the CC forums is designed specifically to make them less usable. Do they look cleaner? Sure. But it takes extra clicks to get anywhere, the color scheme is such that all information blends together, and the forums are all disjointed instead of being visible on one top-level landing page.
Awful.
It’s funny you asked this…just recently, I was on cc BEF (before epic fail) and one of my USC kids was sitting in the same room. I asked her a housing question and she goes, "Mom, anyone can google that, it’s on the USC website, so if you are on CC and answering that question you are wasting your time, the person asking should quit being lazy and figure it out on their own. If they can’t, they shouldn’t be going to USC, or college. " lol, thought you would appreciate that!
Back to our regularly scheduled complaining programming. Can I vote for keeping this thread open too? Because it is the one place I can find the regular posters so it is one of the few places that still feels like home in this crazy upside down world of CC.
Almost every new software I have looked at have a directory on the left hand side to help me navigate. We used to have it on CC, but now it only has featured discussions on the right hand side. And seriously, when someone clicks on Forums they want to see every forum and sub forum, not just the top forums. Why should I need to click on “More Topics” to get to Graduate School, Paying for College, Application and Essay Tips, unless they want to fade out those topics, but I would think those are also important topics.
I think what will happen is people will start threads in the wrong forum because they can’t find the right forum and Mods are going to spend more time moving threads around.
Could someone here really explain CCEdit_Torrey, and what her roll really is? It seems like she has been tasked with finding articles to put on the landing page of this new site. All of these articles are easily found elsewhere. Some are full of information that is “misguided or misleading”. For example, at one point an article about most affordable or good value was linked. It included HYMSP etc…which are great values if you have a lower EFC. But they are not if you don’t…and their acceptance rates are SOOO low that they aren’t a slam dunk. Clearly, they aren’t best buys for the 90% or so of rejected students.
There are parents on this forum who also link articles…and some of those are actually more helpful. Ok…sometimes they aren’t either.
But my point is…finding articles about college, and college admissions isn’t exactly an impossible task.
That the landing page for this new format takes you to a bunch of linked articles makes me feel that this is the direction the new owners of cc want to take. I’ll just let them know…there are dozens of FB groups about college admissions that already do this.
The thing that differentiates this forum from others is the ability to get multiple opinions from folks…which the poster than can research more extensively. A dialogue. A community.
Linked articles will just take all of that away.
Agree with @thumper1. I don’t understand why these not-so-helpful articles aren’t placed on the Articles page, where they belong (and which is empty). If someone wanted to read those, you would think that’s where they’d click. Forums should be the only thing on the Forums page.
And there sure do seem to be a lot of “one hit wonders” lately- who “hit and run” (start some silly thread and then never return). Whats the point, other than to generate traffic.
Especially being on CC you would think they could get a website intern and make changes to better fit their community.
@CADREAMIN Haha much appreciated and totally relatable.
Just letting people know that the popcorn is out and I am lurking this thread. I’m reluctant to add to the post counts just in case someone is keeping track. But, two things: So often, snarky kids are not here to ask questions, but, more often than not, to have their world-views validated. My favorite example involved a kid who got into it with a poster - who shall remain nameless - but, who generally knew his stuff when it came to one particular LAC. The kid couldn’t stand being contradicted on minor details and began taking the replies in a very personal way. I’m paraphrasing, but, I believe the CC veteran (who has since been banned) said, “If you think I’m bein.g picky, then wait until you get into college.” At which point, the girl’s father used her CC account to enter the fray and berate the CCer for “bullying” his daughter. Good times.
The other thing I miss about the old format is how easy it was to check my own threads, I could find them immediately and there was a definite crowd response over days, sometimes within minutes. Now, I’m no longer confident anyone will see my new discussions once, much less be able to repeat finding them again later.
BTW, this thread is the closest thing to the old CC, I have found so far. Maybe newbies should just field their questions here!
The mobile version is not working for me. It is saying posts I’ve read are new. (And I’m sure I’m signed in). When I back space, it takes me back to the top of the page instead of where I last was. Then if I try to scroll down to the last post, I end up beyond the thread. Any other iPhone users out there experiencing the same issue?
@circuitrider Haha sharing accounts is against the TOS. That user should be banned.