Guidance for chance-me/match-me responders

As a spinoff from this thread, creating this thread for experienced members to suggest guidance and best practices to posters who respond to chance me/match me threads.

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Thanks, this should be helpful!

I will share what I posted on that other thread, and think about it some more too.

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When sharing your child’s college application experience and outcome, please mention how recent your experience is. Your child’s experience from 10 years ago might seem (to you) like it happened not too long ago, but that experience may not be as relevant anymore.

Similarly, if it was during an unusual time like the Covid pandemic, mention that.

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If a poster has unambiguously clarified that budget is not an issue, move on. Continuing to push the OP to lower cost options is not helpful.

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Agreed. Some posters come to a 20 post deep thread, read just the OP and start firing off questions repeating things that have already been asked and answered. Not only is this a waste of time and doesn’t move the discussion forward, but IMO it’s also disrespectful to other posters.

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Provide a disclaimer when you are posting about an area not in your wheelhouse. It’s fine to remind someone that exchange rates go up and down when they are excited about how much money they will save if their kid gets in to Oxford. You should provide a caveat once you are comparing the curriculum in physical chemistry at Oxford vs Cornell if you don’t know anything about the science curriculum in the UK and graduated from Cornell in 1979.

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Yes and an adjacent point (that we can all sometimes be guilty of) is not to make an opinion sound like fact.

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Don’t get into an off topic sidebar conversation with other posters. Focus on the OP.

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I think the budget recommendation above is a good one. It’s frustrating for some posters to repeatedly discuss budget issues when they’re really just asking “am I right in thinking I might have a shot at such and such school?” One response saying budget isn’t a consideration right now should be enough.

The other suggestion I would have is to listen to what the poster is asking for. If they want a small school, don’t suggest Alabama or Utah. If they love Williams, then UCLA is probably not the right vibe. If someone says they want a religious school, don’t lecture them about how they really should broaden their search. And if they have a 3.4 GPA, maybe don’t suggest Top 20 schools.

I don’t mean any of that to be snarky, it just seems like we all have our go to schools and our go to questions and we aren’t always listening to the OP’s questions.

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If a poster expresses interest in “T20/50” colleges, don’t simply dismiss their interest in such schools or gaslight them by saying there’s no such thing. Instead, focus on what’s actually helpful to the OP: fit, affordability, having a balanced list, etc.

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And please oh please for the love of God…stop telling the kid who is considering occupational therapy that Stonehill is not a feeder for I-banking or that Fairfield has a great prelaw program and that you shouldn’t waste your money on BU because random state flagship has a better program in supply chain. If you don’t know anything about occupational therapy, it’s great if you post about a bunch of careers that other OT kids have pursued. But the relentless harping on investment banking… often with terrible advice…likely turns a lot of kids off…

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Listen to what the poster is saying. If they say they want colleges in New England, recommend colleges in New England…or at the very least ask the OP if they would like options elsewhere. This goes for any geographic area.

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Yes, but if you see an issue with what they say they want that conflicts with information provided, do let them know. For instance, a kid with a 3.4 UW GPA who is targeting schools with sub-10-20% acceptance rates. A kid whose family will not qualify for financial aid but is including schools that do not offer merit aid that cost more than the budget. These are major red flags that should be addressed no matter what the poster says they want. But then they should be offered suggestions that do meet the other desired criteria.

I think it’s also appropriate to mention (though not belabor) points like the following, where appropriate:

Med and law school are expensive and the family may want to have discussions about budgeting for 7-8 years or going to a less expensive school (though not necessarily the cheapest) to use the balance of college funds for grad school.

The benefits of honors colleges at larger colleges for students who might have originally been thinking of a small to medium college.

One question about the guidance for respondents: if we want to minimize the reiteration of comments/ideas across multiple posters, are we going to be more active in reacting to posts? For instance, the first person who asks a clarifying question we want the answer to as well, do we all like it or :100: it or…?

Or what about someone’s post with feedback we mostly agree with, but maybe not all the things they posted? As the forum does have posters with a variety of viewpoints and degrees of knowledge, how is an OP supposed to know which points are really worth thinking very seriously about (even if it’s an opinion and not a fact) versus something that is more just one person’s own peccadillo that can be more readily disregarded? I think repetition has typically been a way that the forum has handled that, but perhaps there’s a better way?

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Absolutely.

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Also, if the primary thrust of a thread is outside of your wheelhouse… maybe it isn’t necessary or helpful to get in the first word. It’s always an option to step back and see what people with more expertise in that area have to say… and then, if you feel a worthwhile point of information has been missed, sure, go ahead and chime in. Sometimes threads feel like a race to be the one to frame the conversation (and I’ve been guilty of getting sucked into that mindset too); no one person is the right “emcee” for every thread.

Also, as already alluded to above, if you don’t have time to read over what’s already been said, maybe wait 'til you do. Prefacing a long post with “I didn’t read the thread but” just announces that you’re prioritizing talking over listening.

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If you are sharing personal experience/information with the intent of helping the poster, please be accurate and honest about it. Posting partial truths or inconsistent information in different posts is misleading and confusing to readers. It probably only serves to make the poster doing this look disingenuous and unhelpful.

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