This rreally tears it for me: After deciding to give this site one more chance, I get sucked into a thread on the Questbridge forum (which btw, is nearly impossible to find w/o scrolling through countless “latest posts” subjects) only to realize that it is basically 9 or 10 pages of lengthy, tltr;dr, quotes from Princeton Review. The OP is not exactly a noobie, and appears to be a normal new member, but when I got ready to flag her posts, the light bulb finally went on in my head, “Wait. Isn’t CC now owned by Princeton Review?”
I deal with repetitive questions on CC by having my own file of “FAQs” and I just copy and paste my answer that I already wrote once.
Well I did…back when I could use this site easily.
Am I missing something? With the new format I can’t tell if there have been additional comments on a thread that I participated in without bookmarking it. I have been going to my replies and clicking on each one of them to see if there has been more conversation. Is that how others are doing it?
@circuitrider, I thought there was something off with that thread! NOBODY who is going through QB goes into that much research and detail. Good catch.
@lookingforward That did work but landscape view is awful and unusable. Oh well! 
““Wait. Isn’t CC now owned by Princeton Review?””
@circuitrider A few pages back, Roger Dooley chimed in a stated the following:
“in 2016 Hobsons sold CC to Road Trip Nation. Now, apparently, CC is part of the Strada Education Network.”
So, it’s not Princeton Review.
I saw the thread you are referencing and chose not to participate in it for other reasons to do with the nature of the thread.
“With the new format I can’t tell if there have been additional comments on a thread that I participated in without bookmarking it. I have been going to my replies and clicking on each one of them to see if there has been more conversation. Is that how others are doing it?”
There should be an indicator that shows in a little box that indicates “x new posts”.
I believe what Roger said is that CC is owned by Strada and Strada partnered with the Princeton Review. So yes, they have a stake here.
The fuller quote that @lkg4answers found, back on page 79, I think:
“As part of its relaunch of College Confidential, Roadtrip Nation has formed a strategic partnership with The Princeton Review which, for more than 35 years, has been trusted by students and families to help them navigate their college and grad school admissions journeys and get into their dream schools. On a weekly basis, The Princeton Review will contribute content to both the Test Prep and Admissions channels of College Confidential, empowering students with their sought-after expertise and resources.”
Yeah-Huh.
“empowering students with their sought-after expertise and resources.”
so, obviously CC doesn’t want OUR help anymore.
Well, it does say help with the Admissions channel, so who knows how they define help, in this situation?
We wanted to allow time for everyone to use the site for several weeks so that all of your feedback could be collected and now it’s time to review what we have gathered from your posts. We have heard you and compiled a list of what impacts your experience the most:
Navigation:
- You’d like to have the timestamp at the top of a post
- You’d like access to a full page that lists all forum links
- You miss the Top Forum links that were persistent on all pages
- On the Home Page you don’t want to scroll past featured links to see discussion links
- Having the Recent Activity on the bottom of the page makes it hard to scroll quickly to the end of the posts to see the pagination
- Featured Threads take up valuable real estate and are often outdated
Read-ability/Browse-ability:
- The grey font is too light in color to make browsing easy
- The font weight is too thin to easily read
- The spacing between lines adds too much length to the page
- The amount of white space impacts how much content you can see at one time
- The contrast between read and unread posts is not sufficient
- Composing a post or PM is difficult because the text is double spaced when you type multiple lines
- Now that the Save Draft button is gone you’d like to know when the system saves your draft automatically
Mobile experience:
- Font styles make it especially hard to read on tablet and mobile devices
- You’re having trouble finding your way around the site
Bugs:
- Featured and Participated icons are not representing correctly
- Censored words showing in the Recent Activity section
What we hope you know:
- From the outside: We fully understand your value. This amazing community of information that helps students and parents navigate the college admissions process and beyond is fueled by your posts and your answers. This community needs each of you to continue to concentrate on what you do best: offer assistance and help others. You are the voice that others rely on to guide them on a difficult journey.
- From the inside: This site is running off of a platform that we do not have full access to technically. We have done extensive research and found that this product is the best that is available for the millions of posts and millions of pages that are viewed. There is a trade-off to have a site that does not go down or would be otherwise unavailable for that kind of traffic. We are a customer of the vendor and we have to wait in line like every other customer to make fixes and updates. We are working toward an endeavor that allows our internal developers to adjust parts of the site, but that is a work in progress and one that is not quickly resolved for an enterprise-sized site.
To set expectations, please know that although these items seem very easy to implement, they will take time because we are in line for the vendor’s developer resources. The list above, which is based off of your feedback, will be our guide to creating a better experience for all of you.
We are going to close this thread and then create individual threads when we are able to advise when an item has been addressed. We have truly heard you and are doing everything in our power to expedite updates. Please do not start new threads on the same issues; everyone needs your experience and knowledge doing what you do best: helping the community!
Thanks a lot, @CCadmin_Sorin!
So who knows how long it will take for anything to change. I’m guessing a very, very, very long time, if ever.
Thanks for your detailed information but I appreciate your waiting for someone to make the request fixes but just doesn’t make a lot of sense to switch formats without apparent testing and evaluation. So if functions don’t work you just have to wait it out? Not a good business model. If my vendor told me that I would of used a different vendor.
Good Luck.
Thank you @CCadmin_Sorin
@CCadmin_Sorin Thanks for that update. Can you look into two other things?
– Can you make it so when we click on the College Admissions form that we don’t have to scroll through all the sub-forums (I was able to do that in the old format). As things stand I have to scroll past the Common Application, Gap Year and other sub-forums every time which adds to the scrolling http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/
–Can you bring back the save draft function? This was helpful in some circumstances.
Thank you for the update @CCadmin_Sorin
So revert back until they’ve got it fixed. And make them pay for it.
Closing thread? You are closing the site. Good luck.
Appreciate the summary, Sorin.
Not so happy about closing this thread and having us search for new individual update threads…when we’re complaining we can’t find things!
And remember, the pattern of problems seems different, whether one has an IPhone or Android, or is on a cell, tablet, laptop, or desktop.
Yeah, without this thread, I have no reason to check back every day. Bye.