i originally joined this site to meet other future undergrads and get some info on colleges, but i was absolutely floored by the sheer amount of insane parents in the threads!!! do most families not let their kids do anything themselves??? do they realize they are contributing to the increased difficulty and competitiveness of college apps by comparing their kids to people they’ll never meet??? are there parents out there that control their kids acceptances and admissions??? what the heck is wrong with all these people!!!
What other people do in their college searches has no impact on yours.
They are hoping to teach HS students to use capital letters at the beginning of their sentences. 
Seriously, since a college education can cost north of a quarter of a million dollars and many parents are paying a large portion of the cost, it is understandable that they may want to be involved in their kids’ application process. And many of them want to help parents and students who are new to the application process navigate some of the complexities. Look closely – most of the posters bragging about stats and focused on prestige are not parents…
Well, considering it is my dime (somewhere around $150k - $200k on average) paying for college, you betcha I am concerned about the admissions process. Also, just how plentiful and useful is the information you gleen from other inexperienced high schoolers? There is an entire thred devoted to students only input, if you are bothered by the intrusion of parents. Welcome! Happy Hunting!
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No kidding. ^^^
How about this: go find a job, earn the money to support yourself, pay for your car, food, insurance, clothing, rent, gas, SAT/ACT testing, and all the other necessities you required your parents to supply you with your entire life! Then find a way to save $150,000 to $250,000 for you and your siblings. Try it for the rest of the year, and then report back to us. I bet you’ll feel differently about the parents who are on here looking for help, advice, direction and support.
The mere fact that your sentences don’t start with a capital letters is enough to get you rethinking how much your parents could use support here.
Since you have so kindly and politely asked me to punctuate my grammar with capital letters, I will do so in my response. I completely understand what you are saying. My parents have been nothing but supportive throughout my application process, and I am eternally grateful for their insight and knowledge. However, there is a difference between aiding a student in their applications and studies and commandeering it. Maybe we just have experienced different things in our time spent on this website, but I do feel that the most comparisons and questions stem from overly involved parents. I live in one of the most academically competitive areas of the US, and in my experience, parents are #1 stress factor in the lives of students. Perhaps you genuinely want to help you child succeed. That’s awesome! But the kids who, as @intparent stated, are “bragging about their prestige” only value that prestige because their parents and their community value it. I guess what I’m trying to get at is this-- I value my parents above all else, and I will always be appreciative of their role and love in my life. However, they value my happiness above all else, and understand that the college admissions system is an elitist, rigged system in which test scores, grades, and money is deemed more important than real life skills and integrity.
Oh, and PS: I work at one of the most visited museums in the world, pay for my own car, gas, food, and clothing, and actually plan to pay for the majority of my college education myself! I know it’s hard to believe that a high schooler such as myself could be financially independent, but it’s amazing how competent your kids are when you just give them a little freedom 
Also, for some crazy reason, I thought the “High School Life” thread was the students-only thread. No idea at all why I would think that!
“However, there is a difference between aiding a student in their applications and studies and commandeering it.”
How do you know that we are commandeering it instead of aiding it?
How do you know we are overly involved in our kids’ college process? Maybe a lot of us, myself included, like giving useful advice because we have been there ourselves, even though we already have kids in college and don’t need to be here any more. Maybe some of us had literally zero help and would have loved some input, any input, into what needs to be done to get into college, and so we feel that if we can help a directionless kid in some small way, it’s worth our time.
There are definitely overly-competitive paretns who start posting here while their children are barely out of diapers. By the same token, there are some very smug and unappreciative students using this site, but most students who post here are just looking for guidance. If you want to stay sane on CC, and the parents are annoying you, avoid the parents forum, and the chance forum, where you might have your sould crushed.
Ya know, I was going to say something not so nice, but I’ll move on and ignore your post.
Unless you plan to live at home and commute to a low cost college I think this is a bit optimistic.
I have to agree with @matchat’s analysis of the site.
While yes, I value the feedback given by parents, along with the dedication they show in seeing us succeed, there seems to be a point at which their intervention gets a bit intrusive. At least in the high school forums,where I dedicate the majority of my time, the main focus lies in chatting with other high school students and less so on hearing the comments of parents.
There are certain discussion points in particular where a personal experience with modern high school is needed to gauge an understanding of the situation. All to often I hear over-generalized advice from parents who are riding off the fact that they “think” they can relate to a student’s life, while in reality, have no perception of what it feels like to be going through our experiences.
The notion that all parents give generalized advice is overly assumptive, and of course there are exceptions, but looking to the larger picture, I think parents need to come to realize when to take a step back. Too often they feel qualified to respond to a comment simply based off rumors or trends they perceive to understand, while at the same time falling into the habit of counseling unpersonalized and stereotypical advice.
When I ask for feedback on a schedule, I’m looking to relate to actual experiences with courses. Parents who intrude by dissecting the schedule’s perceived balance does nothing but perpetuate the stereotypes which have lately skyrocketed the competitiveness of admissions. In this case, I would instead value for parents to recognize their lack of knowledge and give advice pertaining more to their own experiences, rather than those of an entirely different age group.
Why has the discussion veered off to the OP’s personal life plans? He made a statement about the site in general; it’s unnecessary to be changing the subject.
Because high school students have been through the admissions process and work in the real world in adult jobs, do have so much perspective on it? Everyone is free to contribute to the site – posters can decide individually whose advice seems most logical to them.
If you want to commiserate with other students in the most casual language possible, there are forums at reddit. If you want fairly decent information to augment your own reading of college websites, if you want to survey what experienced people might say about your options, if you want suggestions and advice tailored to your unique situation, ask - or use the advanced search function - in the appropriate forum at CC and it’s likely someone will point you in the right direction. Good luck!
As a high school student who has had more than one unfavorable experience with guidance counselors and the logistics behind high school tracking and advising, I can honestly say that I wish my parents were more involved in my high school career.
I guess at the end of the day everyone has had their own different experiences. What I’ve experience compared to what a parent or another student has experienced can be different, and everyone is allowed to have their own opinion on the topic. All I ask is that parents keep an open mind when it comes to college applications and what their kids want to pursue in both highschool and in life, because I’ve seen far too many kids driven to really unhealthy choices because of the stress they experienced in school and from their parents. Please just remember that this is, at the end of the day, an internet forum created to assist people with their college process, and everyone is on a different journey. @nick3162 is right in that many teens do value advice from adults! I’m not saying that every parent is crazy, or that I hate adults, or that we don’t need parental help at all. I personally just wish that some adults didn’t try to involve themselves in issues that don’t really understand and aren’t experiencing themselves.
We were all HS students ourselves once, too. Some things have changed, but some haven’t. Also, pretty much all the adults out here have kids who are going through or have gone through the college application process. You may notice that parents out here who see to be putting a lot of pressure on their kids are usually encouraged to ratchet it down by most of the other adults on the site. I think you’ve jumped to conclusions about what this site is like with minimal exposure.
@matchat , I have been very active on this site for nearly four years. I can tell you unequivocally that, BY FAR, the most common scenario I see on this forum is not parents forcing kids to make unhealthy choices. Parents love their kids and most parents are cognizant that pushing a kid too much is not good for them or their family. Instead, what is all too common, and a source of stress, anxiety, and yes, depression for a huge number of kids on this site is having unrealistic expectations.
I literally could never begin to count how many posts I have read that start with any of a thousand variations on a theme: I got a C, can I still get into Harvard? There are probably tens of thousands of usernames containing the word Harvard, or other tippytop schools.
There are dozens of posts every year from students who are upset, confused, depressed because they didn’t get into their top choice, or their ED school, or HYPSM, or they only got into their safety school, or worse still, no school at all. One of my personal goals in being a contributor here is to temper stduents’ expectations. I always try to help kids see that they need to apply to a balance of colleges in terms of safety/match/reach, whether that’s four schools or twelve. Some of the saddest posts on this forum are from the kids who come here in April unable to understand what went wrong.
So yes, if I come across as sounding pushy or whatever it may be, that’s too bad. I would rather be truthful with a student than give false hope. It doesn’t mean I am trying to ruin their dreams. I think every student should aim as high as is realistically possible, realistic being the key. Unfortunately, too many kids don’t understand how holistic admissions work until they have worked themselves into a terrible state. Many students on this forum are very, very hard on themselves and feel they need to do things to make themselves appealing to top colleges. They forget that what they really need to do is be happy.
The parents here are way more reasonable than the students, for the most part.