@skieurope I’m not friends with my kids on FB either!
@thumper1 I’m not sure if you were referring to my comments about the MT Forum or not. In the case of the MT Forum, it is not like the helpful ones moved on and then the forum died. The forum was so screwed with the format changes that people left, many who participated for years. It is not like those people just left. It all happened around when the format went through a major change and there was a huge exodus.
It is understandable that many questions get asked again and again, because new families are entering the college admissions years. No problem with that. Personally, I also got tired of writing the same responses so many times. I think having a section with some frequently asked questions or files on some topics might help. Like I said, I’m now in some FB groups related to college admissions and there are files on some topics that are common topics, and so when someone posts a question, some old timers direct them to search those files where the answer can be found.
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I actually created a word document where I’ve saved my replies to (maybe 15-20) often asked questions. I’ll just cut and paste from my word document to CC and then edit/personalize as needed.
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@happy1 That’s a great idea!
Also, in my situation, I do this for a living, as an independent college counselor and so while I love helping people, it is the same thing I do as my job. In recent years, I have enjoyed visiting the Parent Cafe as it is on something different!
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I actually think there are way, way more regurgitated answers than there are questions. Half the posters do not bother to read the entire OP with relevant information and just give the exact same advice over and over again. Count the number of responses to I’m interested in staying in XYZ where 80% of the responses are schools that don’t fit the criteria. I think way more posters are interested in posting to push their own agenda than actually help the students - with a handful of exceptions that continue to disappear. The quality of responders is down dramatically from even 5 years ago and it doesn’t surprise me that posts are down or OP never return to respond to people who didn’t bother to actually read their post.
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Many posters DO ask variations of the same questions so replies can be the same (or close) at times…but agree that anyone who posts on a thread should read the question and reply specifically to the poster’s query.
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The Athletic Recruiting forum is still the best resource on the internet, and still has knowledgeable posters helping 
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I love CC. I have found it to be very informative and valuable, and I hope it continues to be for each new batch of students and parents every year.
There are, however, a few things we (frequent posters) can do better, in my humble opinion.
- don’t jump on the kid that says s/he wants to get into an Ivy+/other T20. It’s fine to ask about budget and safeties, but far too often jaded, long-time posters pile on the kid asking why s/he wants to go to an Ivy? Why are they chasing prestige?, etc. Not a welcoming environment for a teenager who’s looking to learn about the college admissions process.
- related to the above, the conversation often side tracks to “why do you want to go to an Ivy when you can go to far-lesser-ranked college instead?” even when there’s nothing in OP that suggests such a response is warranted or helpful. This does seem agenda driven and is off-putting to new posters.
- sometimes a few posters get into a back-and-forth picking apart a point that has only tangential relation to what OP said. Again, a turn-off.
- many of us are jaded adults with not much patience for sugarcoating, and we may often come across as too harsh or critical in our responses. We should keep in mind that we are addressing young, often uninformed teenagers who are under a lot of stress. We may think we are just telling it like it is, but it would be nice to be more empathetic.
And yes! The search function needs to be fixed
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…soon to be replaced by Happy1GPT
Agree 100%! Also, sometimes people start asking questions that are WAY too personal or sensitive and none of our business.
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Returning to this thread to say that I turned off my ad blocker for this site and it seems to be ok so far. I had the blocker on since the last upgrade because the ads were at a level that had rendered the site unusable for me (and my computer’s fan would run nonstop), but apparently that has been improved since.
Adding: closing the page and then coming back to CC, the banner ad was at the bottom again. Somehow it went away when I clicked on this thread, though I greatly dislike losing vertical viewing space even temporarily.
I was not referring to you. This has happened across subforums. Many people have just moved on which is fine. What is a problem is that others haven’t filled those voids
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But lacking a key feature that would make it more feasible to use:
Threaded display (hierarchical view) instead of “stream” display
At present responses to responses to responses will be jumbled with other responses to responses to responses - based on the time posted. This makes it impossible to follow conversations, or crucially, quickly “skipping” past particular tangential sub-threads to the next truly new contribution in the main thread.
I’ve found myself abandoning topics, because there’s no way I’m going to spend half an hour reading 70 messages that really should have been “grouped” as 3 or 4 sub-threads that I could have easily glanced over and remain active in the main thread.
PS - I have no idea what the “Card View” is supposed to do. Whenever I click on it, the page refreshes, but leaves the “Category” view and goes to “Latest” instead without my asking/wanting, but never actually changes appearance?
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Completely agree.
This happens almost every time some kid mentions they want to study business or econ.
You want to study business? Brown doesnt offer a business degree
Ill study Econ instead.
You know business and econ are totally different right?
The kids dont care. They want to go to a T20 school and figure it out later. Kids think they want to study business because they want to work in a business related field, not because they love taking Accounting 101.
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Only if you find a bot that thinks and reacts as i do.
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Disagree…some kids do care. Not all, but some.
When i was a kid at a not very impressive HS my (former shop teacher) guidance counselor told me economics and accounting were the same – if not for more educated family members i would have made a mistake in applying to colleges. FWIW I am a CPA.
But this getting way off topic.
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While this is off topic, Brown does offer a concentration (their term for majors) in Business, Entrepreneurship & Organizations, as well as an Entrepreneurship Certificate. I know that is not the same as an undergraduate business school.
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I agree. And if a student (who is presumably targeting some kind of business career) goes to a college with only econ/without business majors, what do they do if they find they don’t like studying econ? Plenty of people don’t like/don’t get econ. Then the choices are to change to a different major that is not business-y, or transfer to a school that offers business majors.
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@thumper1…I understand, thanks. I am just saying that with the MT Forum (and not in relation just to myself), the forum got decimated by the CC changes and then old timers and others on that forum left. While people move on generally speaking with regard to interest in a college admissions forum, the forum itself pushed those interested in MT away and once that core was lost, it never returned.