Well, damn. As the parent of a kid at a tippy top and another kid who was in special ed who is at a school that is considerably easier to get into – I can tell you that my tippy top kid is looking at a grad program at her brother’s school. Because what she wants to study is not at all dependent on school name, but rather accreditation – and this program would be convenient and super affordable.
All kinds of students choose schools for all kinds of reasons – there’s no reason for snark. Sheesh.
“Special ed” also encompasses a wide range of kids, including 2E kids, Boulder has some of the top engineering programs in the country (eg aerospace), etc etc, but trying to even point anything like that out on a forum like that is just a waste of time. Of course that environment means parents of “ordinary” kids probably don’t even bother posting there so their little silo just intensifies itself. I wonder if these people are like that (as vocal about those views) in real life too.
I did that about two weeks ago… it felt wild. I texted my D26 that it felt like with that signature I had in essence just kissed away $360K (insert appropriate ambivalent-face emoji)
Here’s the thing:
There’s snarky parents everywhere. In some groups, at some schools, etc., the snark is about getting your kid into a Top 25 college/university. In other groups/schools/etc., you get snark if your kid isn’t going to be attending the nearest in-state university. OR you get snarked at if your kid is applying to a college that the group hasn’t heard of because…you know…if they haven’t heard of the college, it must mean that college isn’t very good. 
Remember way back when our kids were babies? Like, the days of Babycenter message boards when all of the moms on there would snark all high and mighty style about things like:
And then when those babies started to get a little older, it turned into a debate of who was the better parent, as evidenced by whether one’s little one was walking at 8 months old. Whose kid started talking early. And when solids started to be introduced into the kid’s diet? Here come the snarky food police.
So the college snark is, in a way, just a different flavor of ice cream if you think about it. 
You forgot the On Becoming Babywise sleep schedulers vs. the attachment parenting debates!
(I fell firmly into one of the categories, and you can’t sway me otherwise, LOLOL. 
)
another thought on this…
You know what? Nobody cares anymore whether we put our kids in disposable or cloth diapers. You don’t get a special parenting award if your baby liked sweet potatoes more than bananas. 
And once high school graduation is done, none of those other parents we all encounter regularly are going to matter re: their opinions of which college(s) our kids applied to and where our kids are going to attend college. Everybody will move on. Some of those parents will refocus their energy on which elite grad school(s) they want their kid(s) to get into. Some parents will find a different hobby. 
I’m not a UTD parent or alum, but I live in the area and have been on the campus a few times recently. The short answer is indeed No. The campus is on the far northern fringe of Dallas where the city intersects with suburbs - it’s surrounded by 1980s-era housing subdivisions on the south and east, and suburban office parks on the west. There are a couple of newer apartment complexes to the north with first-floor retail that would be walkable from the dorms, albeit across a large boulevard. But to really do anything off campus, you’ll need a car. There are several large shopping centers with restaurants, bookstores, groceries etc. about 5 minutes’ drive away. Downtown Dallas is around 30-45 minutes by car depending on traffic.
OMG I remember GardenWeb back from when I was either trying to get pregnant with my first or needed baby advice - it might have been 2001 or 2002?
That’s helpful info! I kind of figured that was the case based on looking at Google Maps.
Do you have any sense of the vibe of the school? I know it attracts nerdy kids and is heavily South Asian, but that’s all I’ve got.
Does it have any kind of local reputation or stigma?
I made the mistake as a PARENT of asking something in the Chance Me - that was not good and I had to close the discussion because my skin was way too thin.
I love the posts above about some parents are going to be snarky parents.
And I’m a few days late – but I THINK I THINK we might actually have a final list!!
1 TRUE TRUE safety
3 LIKELY with likely funding (but not 100% guaranteed like the TRUE TRUE safety) - She was surprised by how much she liked the schools in this group so that’s a real plus
4 very solid targets -She can also see herself at any of these as well -and these NPC are all within budget
4 reaches – Most likely she will pick an ED1 and ED2 from here. (We are going to visit the top choice to confirm and the go visit the ED2 if ED1 doesn’t come through)
1-3 international options (I haven’t gotten the final word on these yet but they just need to be submitted by December -so we have some time)
Activities done, honors/awards done – she’s working on rough draft(s) of essay(s)
Even if everything was done though - we still have some serious issues with her transcript. They aren’t showing her Calculus class she did over the summer and her teacher wants that on there before she applies anywhere.
I posted a thread like that earlier this year. And got some great suggestions from some really helpful people. But there were a couple of replies that were interesting. Like we should be willing to add on another $10k/yr so the kid can go to a ‘better’ college.
Define “better.”
And I don’t remember if it was in that thread or a different one (or maybe it was a PM/DM) where this one time, somebody replied to me that since they work in cybersecurity, they could definitively tell me that unless my kid is a super math whiz (like MIT level of math), that she was going to totally fail at cybersecurity and, therefore, should find a different major. 
Yeah, there’s no way I’m doing that, especially with C26’s complicated academics. I’ll post basic stats on the college threads if/when they get admitted.
I would say the local reputation is still largely “commuter school,” although UTD has built new student housing recently and is trying to create more of a campus culture. Part of this is the lack of adjacent housing. As mentioned upthread, some colleges’ housing stats show only a small percentage of students living on campus, but in reality a huge percentage of students live in apartments that are adjacent to campus, so it still feels like everyone is right there. Not the case at UTD - there’s hardly any student-friendly housing in walking distance, so off-campus residents are mostly driving to campus from home or from housing farther away.
It does have a large South Asian population, but I’m not close enough to the day-to-day vibe to really know what that means in practice. I think “nerdy” is reasonable for the few current students I know, but also note that while there’s a large National Merit community, the school isn’t especially selective for Texas residents - you will find some B students there who may or may not fit that description.
People choose UTD because of the excellent classroom education you can get for a very affordable cost, not so much because of the campus culture or vibe. To be very honest, IMO it won’t be one of the more attractive or exciting campus locations you visit - it’s essentially a cluster of pleasant modern buildings in the middle of a large flat prairie surrounded by parking lots and suburban development - but the value for the money is real.
Most Chance Me threads are about T20 schools so many commentators are jaded because it’s the same list even though there’s no commonality of why a student/parent picked those schools other than rank.
Usually you start with several comments about affordability. My parents can afford it. Are you sure? Have you run the NPC? Are you really sure? Are you really, really sure? No way they can truly afford it, right?
Then it goes down this path: Why do you have Brown and Princeton when they’re completely different. A few lectures of why chasing prestige is bad etc etc.
Then it finally comes around: You’re a competitive student but your guidance counselor can better answer those questions. In the mean time, pick out 5 more safeties that are really safeties.
This is the best case scenario.
Worst case scenario is it dives into some debate about a particular school(s), major, EC commentary etc.
It starts off with a student looking at a set of schools and ends with 20 recommendations of schools the kid/parent dont care about.
UGH you hit the nail on the head! There’s always this one user in particular that does the financial questioning/arguing in general.
If you really want to create a firestorm, just say “my parents will find a way to pay for it”.
That will set off alarms everywhere and all CC members must report to the thread immediately to stop this catastrophe.
I get their concern but sometimes it’s ok to take the comments at face value.
I find the non T20 Chance Me threads much more interesting but they’re the minority.
Yes, and sadly this poster is also very talkative, and I am not sure if they ever sleep! And there are a few other people who tend towards negativity. But there are other people who are more helpful. You can tune out the negativity. (It’s honestly pretty mild compared to the negativity that I see students blast at each other on Reddit.)
One problem with these threads is the phrase “chance me” itself. Many people post because they want to have others tell them what their chances are for schools with single digit admit rates. This is not something anyone can really do. These threads can be more valuable in helping students to find schools with higher admit rates that have features they want, or helping students find schools that fit within constraints (geographic, financial, specific programs, etc).
True. But most kids who are asking arent interested in other schools with 95% admit rate. They are asking about a set of schools and it deviates into something different.
Sometimes it’s helpful and other times it just noise. I agree that it’s almost impossible to really chance T20 someone but thirty responses later, when the OP doesnt care, it’s just a bunch of posters talking among themselves.
Well, that’s the internet for you… Even a little bit of help can sometimes make all the difference, though.