Making students unnecessarily stressed, convincing them that fellow high school students in Nowhere, Nebraska can genuinely “chance” them for a university, and discussing the minutiae of SAT scores when essays are more important.
Haha chancing is literally the worst thing invented but if it gets people through the process let them do it.
Funny. It has a lot of useless stuff on it, especially chancing. But, it also gives a lot of “user to user” info about financial aid, how to make your college list, using common data sets, scholarships, etc. It can let you look through prior year acceptances to see if a school is realistic for you. It teaches you about using naviance, and about colleges people have never considered or heard of.
It’s very useful if you use it. If treated like a chance game, then no…
I suppose you have a good point, HRSMom. It’s true that general information about financial aid and colleges can be found here. My worries pertain to the fact that many people take this site as more than that 
^a lot of folks will agree with you on that!!
Without this site, I would have no idea about how to even apply to college. I learned about fee waivers, cheap test prep, planning HS courses, when to take the SAT, information about colleges I can’t afford to visit or had never even heard of, financial aid, college planning, Questbridge, summer opportunities, etc just from this site alone. Access to parents who’ve been through the process and know the ‘lingo’ for admissions has been great too. Yes, there are some parts of this website I could without, but CC has been a necessity for me.
The worst parts of CC stand out more than other sections. Different people use it for different things.
CC can’t be completely useless to you if you’ve found it in yourself to make an account and post.
I have found this site to be invaluable. I don’t know about those chance me threads, but there have been many helpful posts in a variety of threads that have taught me so much.
How many Common Data Sets would indicate this to be accurate? In any case, lots of posters refer to essay quality in their comments.
College confidential has been a great resource for me. If you treat it like the be-all end-all resource you will find yourself unhappy. But if you observe and learn the way that everybody does their evaluations you will learn a great deal about how to do your own analysis. If it wasn’t for CC I wouldn’t know about common data sets, pros and cons of the methodologies of different ranking systems.
And sorry but on what basis are you saying so unequivocally that essays are most important? What if you’re applying to schools that don’t even have essays? What if you’re going for guaranteed admission or scholarship programs based on high SAT scores?
If you want to diss on the whole forum then why did you post a zillion “chance me” threads?
I think it can be a useful tool for students going through the college admissions process, especially those whose parents don’t really understand how it works and who may have less than stellar resources in their communities. Here, we have access to information from parents, students and even professionals who understand the process and have gone through it themselves.
The problem arises when people rely on “chance me” threads to seal their fate, when they are so hung up on the Harvard name and ONLY the Harvard name that they fail to really consider what they want to get out of college and where they can find it. And if these students don’t have the resources available to them, they may not realize that the best for them and their interests and talents may not be the “best” according to the U.S. News rankings.
I personally have already graduated college. I am working and trying to figure out where I want to go next, but I may pursue an MFA next year. I don’t even really have much to offer so many of the super high-achieving students here because even though I was a good student in high school, I didn’t exactly attend Elite U. Sometimes I regret it and feel like I messed up somehow. I come here and see all the Harvard and Yale parents brag about their super genius talented kids and feel as though I’ve disappointed mine in some way. I think it’s important to remember when we use CC: we are our own people. Nobody knows us or our situations or who we are or what we have accomplished or strive to do. And we don’t know anything about these other high achievers beyond what they tell us.
So my verdict: take what you need from this site–there is plenty to find useful–but don’t let it become so intertwined with your identity. You’ll just end up hurting yourself and your own growth.