** Please note that 1) you should log in to see the changed and 2) the the end result will match the colors and fonts of the existing theme (as what you see on staging looks slightly different).
Here’s what I’ve been discussing of doing as of now:
make the search feature more prominent on the site; I will also hopefully work on improving the functionality for when we launch
simplify the homepage by removing the entire “Colleges & Universities” category and put it in one of the blocks at the top
create a “Free/Your Resources” box that will include the stuff in the current Resources categories (and have that not display on the homepage)
remove the “Student Lounge” category and elevate “International Students” and “College Life” as new categories on the homepage;
How do you feel about the “Hispanic Students,” “Veterans,” and “African-American Students?” Do we need to keep those as separate categories under “Applying to College” or can the discussions there be more to “Applying to College” directly?
rebrand the “Parents Forum” into the “Parents Corner” (? totally open to your feedback on this) as the place for Parents to have off topic discussions and socialize; therefore:
all college-related discussions that are currently in the Parents Forum should be moved to the main forums; the Parents Forum as it is today (to host college-related discussions) will no longer exist, as those discussions can be had in the other main forums (there is no need for duplicate categories)
(HS) Class of 20xx Communities: will be made into its own category on the homepage
Learning Differences and Challenges - LD, ADHD: should this be under the new “Parents Corner” or moved under “Applying to College?”
Parents Cafe: can we separate some topics from here, like Travel, Cooking, Health & Wellness, Cartoons, Lifestyle, etc.?
Politics Forum: no changes here
Can we combine the AP tests into one category?
I wanted to open this up to all those who want to participate in this exercise. Your feedback is highly valuable and I want us to be working together to make sure the end result matches the community needs and wants. So just let me know your thoughts below!
I am excited about this undertaking cause it can help us make the forums better and easier to navigate.
I like this idea. Hopefully it will clean things up and still be easy to navigate. Each box has a caret that opens several categories below. The list for colleges will be very long. Is it possible to have a search keyword within that box? Or maybe sort by state.
When one highlights a college, is it possible to have a caret that gives the option to open active or hot threads as well as an option to open the entire subforum?
I like this. We see a lot of international students asking questions and I think it would be nice to have a home space for them to ask questions.
Thank you!
I think it should be in applying to college.
Can we more clearly indicate if a thread is a “no reply” thread?
I like the sub categories but I would make them pretty broad. For example,
Travel
Food - ex. restaurants, Costco vs Sams, cooking, prices of eggs etc.
Entertainment - ex. TV, movies, RIP, music, games, etc.
Health & Wellness - ex. COVID, running, cataract surgery, etc.
I’m not sure what threads you expect in the cartoons or lifestyle categories? Where would fashion or British royal family threads go? What about the long threads about college visits?
I think so. There can be pinned threads within that category for each test.
The current Parents Forum is for parents to ask college related questions and have discussions. Honestly, I think that should remain.
The Parent Cafe was specifically set up for social and other off topic discussions that forum members wanted to do…not related to college.
I’m not sure I see a good reason to change this. It’s not broken. Why fix something that is not broken. And I do think you will lose posters doing this. We DO need a Parent Forum section on this site, in my opinion.
A category I DO think you need to change…Paying for College. Since that name change, that sub forum has gotten precious little traffic. I really believe that Financial Aid and Scholarships was a better name for that one.
Isn’t this site predominantly parents answering questions? What percentage of people asking questions are parents and what percentage are students? Is it 50:50? Personally, I think college related questions should be in forums or subforums for that topic.
Parents Forum and Parents Cafe are too similar and the title doesn’t really tell the user what types of discussion belongs in those subforums. If parents want to talk to parents about college, I would title it differently and put it in the section with the Parents of Class of 20XX threads.
That’s one of the reasons I proposed eliminating the Parents Forum. Our population is primarily Parents, so the entire site can be a place for Parents to ask questions. Why would a Parent ask in the Parents Forum and not Applying to College? Makes no sense to me to keep duplicates.
We are also eliminating Student Lounge as that didn’t really generate much activity anyway.
Another area I think needs some work is the Medical School area. At this point, it is only getting BS MD and BS DO posts. It’s a shame because it used to be a vibrant area for parents and students who were looking to become doctors.
Perhaps @WayOutWestMom might have an opinion about that section.
We of course encourage students. We always have and always will. However, the reality is that students are more likely to go to Reddit or social media. That’s fine. I hope we are able to keep launching programs to incentivize them to come over. The quality of the information here is top notch and we have seen great success with the Essay Review service, Chance Me / Match Me, or the Decisions Calendar.
Most of these changes are aimed at students or new parents. Most active contributors use the Latest Posts view, so the homepage is not that important for them.
I’m probably the exception in that I never use the “Latest Posts” view. It shows too many threads I have no interest in, so instead I just use the Notifications view to see activity on the threads I’m following. I periodically also check the “New Threads” view.
The homepage view is not important for me either.
Same for me; my preferred start page is the Unread page, and my browser’s autocomplete is such that I type in “u” and hit the down arrow and Enter and I’m on that page. I’d say that’s my onramp to CC probably 99.9% of the time.
The threads I’m following — and any updates in them — are really what I’m interested in catching up on.
In terms of attracting students, I think that’s great, and hope that can happen, though I hope we can get more thoughtful/introspective folks (@lilyesh is a great example), and fewer of the posts with titles like “Normie White Girl Shotgunning T20s Am I Cooked”.
TBH, I’d love a blanket rule like “No more ‘Chance Me’ posts … instead, post ‘Help me expand my list of schools’ threads”. Or, perhaps “No ‘Chance Me’ posts are allowed for any school with an admit rate under 20%”. As it is, people post absurd profiles onto a list of absurdly rejective schools, and it’s like … what are you expecting here?? Even the AOs at the schools you’re applying to couldn’t give you a realistic evaluation of your likelihood to get into that school.
Back to the point about attracting students, and discounting what I said in the immediately preceding paragraph, I’d recommend talking to more of the students on that point, and fewer of the parents that are here. We (parents) are here because some aspect of the forums is appealing to us … the people who aren’t here will probably have more valuable insights for what to improve. (I’m guessing you’re already doing that; just wanted to mention it, lest you end up with a survivorship bias.)
I hear what you’re saying about the “chance me” threads, but I think those are pretty much the only threads created by students. Rarely do students create chance mes for schools with greater than 40% acceptance.
If we stop three threads I think we’ll pretty much lose our student audience.
