<p><a href="http://www.themarinaexperiment.com/wp-content/uploads/blind-leading-the-blind11.jpg%5B/url%5D">http://www.themarinaexperiment.com/wp-content/uploads/blind-leading-the-blind11.jpg</a>
I believe that sums it up. Everything from the "Chance me" threads to the High School Life. Feel free to disagree, but I do have major issues with 13-17 year old kids dogmatically telling another kid that he or she can or cannot get into the said schools and giving advice of doing some irrelevant extracurricular activities that they've heard colleges like from other teenagers. That is why I hang around the Parents' Forum often... Why am I even on this site?</p>
<p>"Your chances seem slim because X University looks for high math scores and a passion in science. While your GPA is decent and your M + V is slightly above average, you lack science ECs so that will diminish your chances. Plus, you quit band sophomore year and started again junior year. X University likes commitment so that will also hurt you. </p>
<p>By the way, chance me back for X University!"</p>
<p>These are the worst</p>
<p>Actually, to make this broader: does anyone have any idea what they are doing when it comes to life?</p>
<p>david, you said it yourself, you’re here to hang out with us parents. We don’t think much of the chance forum either. And – admit it – as parents go we’re pretty cool. :)</p>
<p>Its internet, you can post anything you like, the other party can do the same. You have to take all answers with a grain of salt, including those from parent…:)</p>
<p>Yes, its blind leads the blind.</p>
<p>"Actually, to make this broader: does anyone have any idea what they are doing when it comes to life? "</p>
<p>Tebow!!</p>
<p>David, you always sound bitter and always seem to be looking for the approval of parents to justify your bitterness. But the thing is, the parents forum is filled with people who are willing to give a pat on the back to any whining suck-up with no sense of personal responsibility.</p>
<p>You also need to stop feeling superior to other people based on your percieved intellectual superiority over them. But you haven’t said anything that hasn’t been said literally thousands of times by other “misunderstood”, slacker, pseudo-intellectual teenage rebels. Let me guess, you are probably an objectivist, anarchist, or Libertarian too. </p>
<p>Why do you care if people want to post chance threads? I post them out of boredom, and I’m sure many people do too. It’s not really that consequential of an activity. Go rail on furries or something.</p>
<p>Besides, you could’ve at least bothered to post a snazzy macro or a demotivator.</p>
<p>My advice to kids? Get off the “chance me” forum & go do your homework! :D</p>
<p>Granted, I don’t link “chance me” forum, but overall I think there is more benefit from CC then harm. It’s an open forum for information and ideas exchange. Sure, some people, actually, I should probably say the majority of members, may not be experts but they are willing to share their knowledge and experience. And I really appreciate this. You don’t have to take every advice that is given to you, but it is always better to be informed than not informed.</p>
<p>I think the “Chance me” responses are very rarely useful. I have to say, though, that seeing the outcomes of a large number of students year by year offers some very helpful perspective on the admissions committees at various top schools–and this was essentially unavailable in many parts of the country when I first joined CC. While I still don’t understand the patterns that I am seeing at a few places, I can at least recognize the pattern in a way that has some predictive power–that’s very useful. </p>
<p>Also, there are some posts in the Parents Forum that are hilarious–intentionally, I hasten to add.</p>
<p>Forgetting the chance me posts. I have found cc to be the best thing since sliced bread. No where else could I have gotten info to pass on to my son but here. I would not have understood the timing of all the testing in Jr year until I asked the question in the parent’s forum and got 4 pages of posts with 5 thank-yous. One very nice young man posted his entire Jr year testing plan/schedule which I printed and gave to my son who did exactly what was suggested.</p>
<p>Endless times have I found out something subtle because someone, somewhere here on cc either has experienced the issue or knows someone who has or has kids who went through what ever I have asked.</p>
<p>This is an invaluable forum and unfortunately the chance me threads make everyone feel inferior since most kids cannot list the ECs or GPAs that some have posted. I don’t even know if many really are true and with only 10 slots on the common ap, I have no idea how they could possibly list them all.</p>
<p>Agree with Lakemom 100% on the value of this site for a parent to mine for wisdom from those with varied experiences. The Chance stuff could be rectified or at least reduced by keeping an updated forum on common data sets.</p>
<p>My observation on one area of real value provided by this site is where experienced parents have generously given sound advice on financial aid to kids who have no where else to get the help they need. A parent who has great expertise on the subject, offering solid, relevant advice to a kid with non-functioning or absent parents and guidance counselors…… touching.</p>
<p>I think the chance threads are often pretty useless, because (in my opinion) most kids are asking the wrong question. What are my chances for Harvard? is the wrong question. Better questions are: How’s my list? What schools should I add to my list? What are some schools like X that I might like and have better chances getting in? Etc. Questions like that can get some good answers, although maybe not from other kids with the same questions.</p>
<p>I think the ‘chance me’ threads are useful because you can see what people who are applying to particular schools have done. </p>
<p>There are many high schools where no-one ever applies to the kind of top schools that are discussed on this site. While things like the mid-50% SAT ranges and what the schools publicly say is important are useful, they can only tell you so much. When people have no previous applicants from their school and guidance is lacking because guidance councelors simply have no experience of advising people about top schools, the information provided in the chance me threads is at least something: a data point against which people can judge their own application.</p>
<p>The responses, yes, are not always particularly useful, although I have seen some very good advice provided by people who have actually been through the process and been accepted, or even who are alumni interviewers and the like, in school-specific forums.</p>
<p>@DTF -Thanks for the laugh!</p>
<p>Honestly though, I’ve been browsing the kid forums more often now. Sometimes a bit of irrational exuberance and optimism is refreshing after reading endless threads on the minutia of HYP.</p>
<p>Nice, DTF. 
The ones that get me are “Chance me - I’ll chance back!” Or in other words, “I’m too clueless to trust my own opinion, but if you give me yours I’ll bestow upon you the clueless opinion that even I wouldn’t take!”</p>
<p>Chance me and Accepted threads are valuable insofar as they can show some over-confident parents and students the range of stellar studenthood they’re competing against. In some places in America, a kid with all A’s and good SAT’s is mistakenly thought to be a shoo-in for the Ivies, and is even told that by teachers and counselors. Seeing the range of awards and accomplishments others have amassed can be an important reality check for the naive or uninformed.</p>
<p>OP, college confidential is what you want to make of it. If you want to blindly trust what some nameless (or using an alias) faceless person on the internet says, you may be lucky and that advice may the best piece of advice you received. Or it could be the worst advice or some where between the best and the worst.</p>
<p>Similarly, if you expect that everyone on CC will see the world the way you do, have your same likes and dislikes etc., you are in for a rude surprise.</p>
<p>Those who use CC with a sense of caution, those who know when to go with what is posted on CC and when to trust your own instincts, are those who will benefit most from CC. There is a lot of good stuff in CC and there is a lot of junk. As I have posted often on these forums follow the principal of Caveat Emptor or buyer beware.</p>
<p>If you do not like CC or believe that is for the most part worthless, then you have the power to do something i.e. never log back in to CC. And believe me, there are hundreds of students who get into top colleges without having read a single post in CC so you will not be disadvantaged.</p>
<p>LOL gadad, you got it in a nutshell!</p>