<p>Ok, I have only been on CC for like two months now but there is something that I have noticed that is REALLY bugging me. Why do parents never say what college they are talking about? This oddity (from what I've seen) really only applies to parents and it really doesn't make sense to me. Are you trying to sound more humble by not name-dropping some school? </p>
<p>You say things like 'my D applied to many elite LACs', 'my daughter went to a well-known public university' or 'I just visited a prestigious north-eastern university'.</p>
<p>I don't mean to offend anybody but do you know how silly that looks? You are on an anonymous forum that is entirely devoted to college. The idea of this site is to find out about colleges, not to group them by region and then hide their actual name. Trust me, nobody is judging you if you just say 'my son is deciding between Stanford and UChicago' instead of 'my son can't decide between an undergraduate powerhouse and a midwestern elite school.'</p>
<p>Sorry if I come off a little condescending but I'm just sharing a pet peeve.</p>
<p>Actually, I don’t believe it is as anonymous as you think. Someone very recently posted that a college admissions staff figured out who they were by their posts. Some colleges do visit these forums.</p>
<p>I don’t think you are being condescending but a little naive perhaps.</p>
<p>I can understand not naming a school for a specific decision, but my pet peeve is when people use initials that can stand for multiple schools. USC is South Carolina and Southern California . . . Just type out the schools, at least the first time.</p>
<p>Sorry but it is just too easy to identify people if someone really wanted to take the time, especially if you have an unusual circumstance like winning a big scholarship, athletic recruits, etc.</p>
<p>Because sometimes the things being talked about are conceptual in nature, and the specific college or university being discussed isn’t the point.</p>
<p>I do think it is about anonymity. Sometimes, it is just too easy to figure out who a person is based on posts. There are some crazy people out there in internet-land. Nevertheless, I never had a problem posting my D’s college name.</p>
<p>I agree that the cloak and dagger approach to naming a school seems a bit silly at times. And, anonymity is blown as soon as a poster starts giving any detailed info on school specific threads. The reality of our electronic world is… those from whom we wish to remain anonymous have the most tools at their disposal to circumvent our efforts.</p>
<p>I think Pizzagirl is dead on. There are a lot of conceptual questions asked on these forums. Naming a school will bring out every pro and con ■■■■■ on the boards (myself included). Want to get a thread off-track? Ask why University of Miami is better than University of Florida. Or if Michigan is as good as an Ivy. Or God forbid suggest that USC (Southern Cal) is better/worse that any of the UCs. Name a school and you can watch the discussion quickly devolve into “well WhatsamattaU is hardly a good example of this issue”. </p>
<p>I think the anonymity stuff is over-blown. Thinking that colleges have the time and resources to ■■■■■ CC in order to find negative comments and link them to specific students sounds like a “boogie-man” story to me. I tend not to mention my kids schools because it’s where they’re going not me. Obviously I frequent the boards of schools they attend, I attended or places I have reasonable knowledge about, but it seems fairer to let them decide how much they want to post about their schools.</p>
<p>If you don’t like the anonymity, you always have the option to discount the advice. At the end of the day just remember you’re seeking/interpreting input from anonymous posters who can be anyone from college administrators to igloo-bound shut-ins desperate for any human interaction. </p>
<p>Free advice has always been worth twice what you pay for it.</p>
<p>This is certainly true with regard to malefactors. However, I think the kind of half-a**ed efforts at anonymity that many of us make on this forum are aimed not so much at preserving our privacy from people who would be out to steal our identities, etc., but to avoid immediate identification by casual readers who know us or our kids IRL. Absolutely, a determined reader can go cross-reference what we’ve written on school specific threads and track down our identity. However, I suspect most of us assume that most readers are not that determined. We just don’t want a casual reader who happens to be the parent of a fellow student in kid’s homeroom at school to think “Des Moines resident, varsity baseball player, recently visited Colorado College … hey, I know this family!” So we obfuscate a bit.</p>
<p>It’s not always about remaining anonymous. Sometimes it’s about self-protection. God forbid your kids’ school isn’t “good enough”. Someone will make sure you know it if they happen to disagree with you. And when discussing things that are conceptual in nature, as PizzaGirl pointed out, the school itself does not matter. A kid in trouble at an open enrollment school is going to need to do the same things as a kid in trouble in the ivy league.</p>
<p>I’m with CuriousJane on the initials. Those crack me up. SDSU - South Dakota State U. And NE? Everybody knows that’s the abbreviation for Nebraska.</p>
<p>It is not just about our anonymity. It is about our children’s anonymity. Parents, being older and wiser are more careful not to spill too many beans. If a kids says something here and somebody in homeroom or facebook says hey was that you on CC - well he gets to deal with it. But if mom does it, OMG the world is going to end! Can you imagine a kid in homeroom saying hey I saw what your mom posted on CC yesterday.</p>
<p>ordinarylives-SDSU to me also means South Dakota but for most people here it’s San Diego :D. NE is of course Nebraska, unless you live on the east coast then it is New England :D.</p>
<p>On the other hand, vague references to schools when asking “is it worth paying a lot more to attend a prestigious school than a cheap public school?” tend to just incite prestige wars that can go on for hundreds of posts with little information specific to the OP’s decision. With named schools, respondents can be of more help with school specific characteristics (in one case, the “more prestigious” school had so little prestige that it would be dubious even for a prestige-conscious parent/student to pay the $140k premium; in another case, the “public school” was one of the top schools for the student’s intended major).</p>
<p>ucbalumnus–but in a case like that it is a prestige issues and should be discussed because if that public school is the top school for that major, I would HOPE that the parent and child KNEW that when they applied…</p>
<p>Yes, I can imagine. lol. The world would come to a grinding halt; drama (and other things) would hit the fan; and yet again I will have ruined her (social) life. ;)</p>
<p>A schoolmate of DDs. He posted some very specific things and I recognized him. I found out that he was discovering his true sexuality before coming out to anyone. (And he still hasn’t come out).</p>
<p>That particular thread became a prestige war of hundreds of posts. Someone dug around the OP’s posts and posted the actual schools. There were fewer than ten replies about the specific schools, while the prestige war continued on for a while longer.</p>
<p>For me it’s anonymity from my kid! It didn’t take me very long to figure out his screen name based on the threads to which he posted on specific colleges and the timing of them as it correlated with decisions from colleges. Since he didn’t come out and tell me his screen name, I assume he wants to be anonymous about his posts, so I will respect that and do the same.</p>