I have been reading occasionally on CC for a few years now and have always wondered why the State Forums section only has subforums for so few states? Why isn’t there a subforum for each state? Seems like that would be much more useful.
I’ve wondered why there is a state forum at all! Every state has more than one college. This seems like a waste of bandwidth to me.
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I think it could be useful to break it down by state. There are certainly financial advantages to staying in-state.
But this is just weird. Only CA, FL, TX, MA, and NY?? Where are the rest?? Either do all 50 or don’t do any.
There are forums for each college here. Not sure why there needs to also be a state by state listing.
There aren’t really forums for each college, though. I know plenty of colleges in North Carolina, my home state, that aren’t listed in the alphabetical listing or the tags. CC is not very inclusive (very biased toward Top20) and separating it out by state would actually level the playing field a bit more.
It’s also much more intuitive to look by state.
Why have a State Forum section that then lists only 6 states? That’s just weird.
Totally agree about only using six states. Maybe that long list of colleges should be divided up by state…so when you click a state you get all the colleges (public and private) in that state.
I completely agree that the six chosen states is odd! For example, Ohio has a bunch of public universities…as well as a bunch of other universities…so why isn’t Ohio included…as an example.
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Yes, I think that would be much more user-friendly overall. You wouldn’t have to move or duplicate the forums or anything. You could just have a listing by state and then redirect to the existing forum or if there isn’t one create one. I think it would be a lot more intuitive.
I certainly wouldn’t want to have to find/remember/click through a state listing to find each college I want to read about when I can just find them in an alphabetical list.
Yes, there are 1,200 + institutions in the US (just those reporting SAT scores to IPEDS - there are probably many more). IME, CC focuses on those that have the most interest. It doesn’t profess to be a comprehensive database of every school in the country. If there is a school with substantial traffic/discussion/requests, I’m sure it would be added.
Not long ago, there was an entire section with dozens of schools that averaged about a post per year. It was rationalized to the schools that showed interest, just as most online social media sites focus on those that engage the audience. So CC will adjust with the audience demand.
The existing state forums are the largest states with the largest populations, largest state university systems, and most interest from forum members.
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I am from Ohio. The number of public colleges and students there is likely the same or very close to Massachusetts. But then…Ohio isn’t in Ivy country.
We’ve actually been working towards making conversation about every school accessible. We should have a tag available for every school in the U.S. (we have 3700 so far). Not every conversation is tagged correctly. For example, let’s say you wanted to discuss Ashland University in OH. We want to make it easier to:
- Find information about the school (via the CC college page)
- Find discussions about Ashland U (via the ashland-university tag)
- Find info about other colleges in OH (via the CC college search page)
- Save Ashland to your list of colleges (via the CC list feature - heart a college to save)
This is true - most conversation outside Top20 schools tends to be topical - in Chance me, College Admissions, Search & Selection, etc. Having both colleges and states as tags will allow any conversation about those less popular schools and states to exist where it makes sense topically but easy to find via tags.
Now the trick is to organize the existing content and to encourage folks to start using tags… 
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Ehhh, I dunno. North Carolina is larger in population than Massachusetts and according to Google has more colleges and universities than Mass. It also has one of the best public university systems in the country, but some of the lesser known schools are not represented.
If I were designing this I would have a forum for each state and list every university in the state with links to the relevant already established forum if applicable (again, no need to do away with the alphabetical listing although it is VERY unwieldy—just redirect the link under the state to the existing forum.) If a small school doesn’t warrant its own forum it could go under the state. There are a LOT of colleges and universities not represented here and some are pretty large. The tags are not a good solution IMO. Better to just use the existing framework and put them in the state forums. If my kid can pay in-state tuition at a public in my state I would like to look at them all, but they’re not all listed in the alphabetical listing.
So you have:
State Forums
Alabama | Alaska | Arizona | Arkansas | California | Colorado | Connecticut | Delaware | etc
Then nested under “Alabama” you have
Auburn | University Alabama | University of Alabama in Birmingham | University of Alabama in Huntsville | etc.
These links can just go to existing forums, but it’s a lot easier than wading through alphabetical listings and can help you focus where to search out schools. If a school doesn’t have a forum you could create one, or you could just let there be a general discussion under the Alabama forum.
and then you can also keep the alphabetical listing:
Colleges and Universities A-Z
Adelphi University | Agnes Scott College | University of Alabama | University of Alabama Birmingham | etc
It just makes sense. Having 5 states under the State Forums makes no sense at all. I think the alphabetical listing is cumbersome and tedious to wade through, but keep it if it makes people happy. Having 5 states listed under State Forums is just stupid. Either make it all 50 or get rid of it.
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