Ridiculous Negativity

Parent Cafe
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I find that there are as many mean, arrogant, and pedantic people on CC as there are helpful, kind, and considerate folks. How are we helping these kids with direction when we chew them up and spit them out because we know better, we have thousands of posts, or because we are senior members. Eventually, CC will become nothing more than a bunch of angry adults anonymously screaming at each other (if it isn’t already).

The real world is a mean place, we all get that. But some kids peak their heads in to this forum for the first time looking for help. It’s so obvious who they are. If we bite their head off and call them out for posting in the wrong place, or break some other CC rule, they will surely leave forever. Is this constructive? Is it helpful? Maybe this is ok for some of you, but not with me.

The CC community often remind me of the clerks at the motor vehicle department. I’m here for the first time. I dont know which forms to fill out or which line to stand on. The clerks do this 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. They look at me like I’m stupid, they answer my questions like I’m stupid. I always leave that place feeling, well, stupid. Not a good feeling. Let’s not become the motor vehicle department.

By the way, I am guilty of the offenses listed above. I’ve made a promise to myself to either be helpful, or move on.

1 Like
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Since you have called me out personally, I have no problem quoting you and thanking you for making my point way better than I ever could have.

That’s not what I or OP said (meaning the first part of your quote). We both said any discussion of facts can be delivered with good intent or bad intent. Yours is pretty obvious. It’s the same amount of work either way.

While I give you credit for admitting it, I am not sure why it is a matter of pride in your world. We’ll just have to politely disagree on that (well, one of us will).

I don’t want to keep kicking this dead horse, but let me try one more time with two simple questions:

  • Does anybody doubt that many people think there are many rude and crass posts on CC?
  • Does anybody think it would be a worse place if people made an effort to make it less so?

If you disagree with the first one, fine, but a quick google shows many disagree. If you disagree with the second, well, we don’t have a lot more to discuss.

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Although I enjoy being on this site A LOT (it’s fun to give advice/experience and interact with other students), this website is known for its pretentious/harsh members. Go on twitter and search “college confidential” and all you’ll see are tweets about how everyone is on here.

I did ONE chance me back when I first joined…never did another, lol.

Chance me’s are also pointless, because information about the schools can be looked up easily. You can chance yourself. Many Chance Me threads (including mine, I’ll admit) are for an ego boost/to ease anxiety.

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I also agree that the whole top school obsession is waaay crazy. My school’s valedictorian has a 4.7 and still didn’t feel the need to apply to any Ivy’s. Her toughest school was probably Boston University.

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I think there should be a sticky on the chance me thread that says something along the lines of “WARNING, no one posting on this thread can predict your chances of getting into any specific university. Comments here can cause overconfidence or despair but have no impact on what your future college choices might be. The advice here is worth what you pay for it”.

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And yet the posters who continue to complain about how unnecessarily harsh and rude this website is continue to return time after time as if in a righteous battle between good and evil.

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Forgive me, but I am not sure what your point is.

If it is me you are referring to, please be assured I don’t think it is a righteous battle between good and evil.

What I think is this: I came here to learn and get things from this site, and I also believe very strongly that you only get out of something a factor of what you put into it. So I am commenting, as we all are, in the hopes that it will be read and maybe have a tiny bit influence to possible beneficial effect.

Can’t hurt, right?

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@STEM2017

I am very much in agreement about this. I’d like to think this could change as well.

That said, this is not what the OP is talking about. I would love to shift the conversation to here, but the responses to the OP seem accurate on the subject they provided.

The shining light is, as you said, that there are lots of helpful/kind/considerate posters as well as mean/arrogant/pedantic. As long as there’s both, hopefully, the heads will grow back with some care from the former.

Sadly, this is the internet - functioning as well as the DMV here is actually a feat of some sorts. I do think we can do better though, for sure.

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Just an observation.

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Are we calling them out to say, “Hey, please don’t hijack someone else’s thread, you might want to start your own in the forum and here is a link”? That isn’t being mean… it is giving directions. Or sometimes we are telling them about the CC rules for their own good. If they haven’t read the TOS and don’t know that they should not try to spell around blocked website names or something like that, it is probably better that someone tells them before they get dinged by moderators for breaking the rules.

There are literally hundreds of helpful posts for every one that matches your description, IMHO. The experienced posters spend a lot of time out here helping people. When I read mentions elsewhere about CC being awful, almost inevitably they were in the chances or the Ivy forums. They spent ten minutes in those and left. They weren’t in financial aid or college selection or summer programs or anyplace else where some of the most helpful posting goes on.

Now… a lot of students on the chances thread don’t want to be helped from what I can tell. And they will argue about how qualified they are when someone lets them know that their list is reach heavy and what the weaknesses are in their application. I always start out nice, but if they want to argue that their chances are higher, I will tell them what I think. If all they want is validation, then they probably need to go someplace else. When you ask, “What Are My Chances?” and don’t like an honest answer… that is probably not our problem. College admissions is complicated, expensive, and full of pitfalls. I think a poster who wants to figure out how to navigate that can get a ton of help out here. Someone who just wants to know how to get into “top schools” and doesn’t want to hear that they most likely aren’t going to make the cut and need backup plans isn’t going to enjoy their experience as much.

My experience is that it is pretty rare for new posters to be given a hard time unless they are stubbornly sticking to something that really isn’t true or isn’t going to work. There is more snark and shortness of long time posters with each other than with new posters.

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I just read the comments about college confidential on urban dictionary and it is hilarious, awesome. The chance me threads are pointless. If you really want to chance yourself go to a site like parchment or college stats that well give you your chance quantifiably. I came to college confidential to try to get insights to the soul of the colleges, things you can’t find out in the brochures, like if everyone there is drunk 24/7 and the favorite pastime is sexual harassment or if the idea of a big party is three people in a room watching Star Trek reruns untill 9pm curfew.
As for the site being a trollfest, college confidential is far far milder then most anywhere else on the internet. Try reading the comments on IGN or on a Yahoo news story. Anyway, in closing, “CC sucks and it’s all Obama’s fault and I Donald Trump came here to tell you your all a bunch of losers.” It’s the world we live in.

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Well… Parchment is a parlour game, IMHO. Anyone can enter anything, and there is no validation of what is entered. I’d say your school’s Naviance (if you have it) and GC are better resources than Parchment. (See, wasn’t that helpfu? :D)

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I have to admit to occasionally getting a little crusty with some posters. These incidences usually fall under one of these categories:

  1. Repeatedly insisting that something that's factually incorrect is in fact true: "My coach says he can get me an athletic scholarship to Harvard and I'm gonna believe him, not all you CC parents who say Harvard doesn't give out athletic scholarships."
  2. Playing people who have tried very hard to be helpful: "Haha! Gotcha! I know you've all spent the last 10 pages telling me how to get out of my abusive home but really I was just bored. Going out for steak and a movie with Mom and Dad now."
  3. Entitlement: "It's not *fair* that I have to settle for my safety, U Chicago."
  4. Cruelty/denigration of other people's dream schools: "You couldn't even get into Cornell, the worst Ivy? You suck. Anyone with a brain can get into Penn at least, and even that isn't much of an accomplishment."

(These are not quotes from actual posts, just examples of the kinds of things that cheese me off.)

I stay away from the chances threads because they’re too annoying and add so little value. I’ve learned a ton from posters on the other forums even when we’ve disagreed and generally found CC to be a supportive community. Perhaps it’s because I spend most of my time on the parent threads.

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I had always thought that since parchment dealt with real transcripts they had real numbers. For our family naviance had to small of a data base to be of much use and parchment proved extremely helpful. My son didn’t get admitted to anywhere he had less then a 70% chance to get into and everywhere he had more. parchment is a big reason he is at Vassar. So parchment gets it’s data from posters self reporting or does it get hard numbers from transcripts? Anyway if you use parchment and I tells you that you have a 12% or whatever chance to get into Harvard then you know you need to have back-up plans though as a mater of advice your chances are even lower then parchment says because it doesn’t take into account hooks.

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Oh boy this has ballooned into a full blown war. Firstly, I DO NOT believe that CC should be a “safe space” with no criticism or realistic responses… CC was created to be helpful and informative. I think this whole “safe spaces” on college campuses is ridiculous also. My entire argument that has been vastly misunderstood is that kids should come on here and get more than a broad, generic statement if they ask for their chances or if they ask if their app is good. I feel like any chances responder has this preconceived notion that they HAVE to point out at least 3 weak spots on their app and to squash any hopes, making the student think that they’ve got to cure cancer to get into a top 25 school. And on the topic of the pointlessness of chances forums in the first place, I couldn’t agree more.

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As others have pointed out, the “chances” threads are largely the blind leading the blind. Even an admissions professional looking at a student’s “chances” thread couldn’t give more than a vague answer because so much depends on the actual application, not simply the application as seen through the eyes of the applicant.

How many times have you seen a student rate their own recommendations or essays as below average? It does happen, but not often. More often we seem to be living in Lake Woebegone, where almost every kid is loved by their recommenders, comes from an award-winning school, and writes excellent essays. It’s natural that kids are a little overly optimistic and it’s not their fault, but we don’t really do them any favors when we fail to recommend running the NPC or adding an extra likely school.

“I have a 4.0 and a 2300 SAT, and I’m president of the student council; will I get into Harvard?” is largely a useless question because so much depends on the less quantifiable aspects of the application. Does the LOR describe the applicant as having a thirst for knowledge or as working hard to get to the top of the class? Does a turn of phrase in the essay strike the reader as glib or witty?

Better than “chance me” threads are the “How can I present the strongest application?” threads in which students take advantage of the wisdom of the hive to target schools which best match their interests, budgets and strengths. I think both parents and students are happy to help kids looking for useful information.

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“… and some seem to take glee in delivering crushing blows to the inexperienced and the clueless. I don’t get that.”

Bingo. That is very, very true. One of those “some” is participating in this thread.

My view: realism is, of course, the aim, but there are a good many here who don’t really know the range of kids who are actually admitted to highly selective schools, and would absolutely c-rap themselves if they knew some of the low-end admit numbers at, say, Dartmouth.

I see too many people tell some kid with a 3.5 GPA not to bother applying to Bowdoin, and I just shake my head. You have to ask so many other questions and really know who does and doesn’t get in there before doing that … it just kills me every time I see it. And, frankly, I’ve run into a few college counselors who meet this description and of course they charge a lot of $$ for their often overly pessimistic advice. Is the kid an athlete? Have they tried being recruited? Where are they from? Is that school trying to increase the # of kids from there? An URM? First kid in the family to go to college? Have they overcome anything heavy in their lives? I attended law school at Penn with a woman who grew up in a migrant farm worker family and, with her several siblings and mother, watched in horror in her front yard as a drive-by shooter shot and killed her father. Do you think any ad com read her college app and compared it, blow by blow, with the 30 apps from Mercer Island High School? I can tell you she had a lot of choices despite having a pedestrian GPA and test scores. And, in my opinion at least, for good reason.

The other one that blows me away: “Even if you get in, you won’t be successful there because the caliber of students is beyond your academic abilities.” There is SO much to know before coming to that conclusion and then telling some impressionable kid. Who are you to do that? Are you really qualified to pass on that advice? Probably not.

The category of “other” stuff, which is very hard to get your hands around, is more powerful in college admissions and subsequent college performance than people generally think. Of course, the stats right under the meat of the bell curve is easy for even a monkey to access… anyone can give that advice.

With that all said, I also agree that the “Chance Me” threads are stupid and useless.

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Yes, there are ppl who are intentionally mean. Not a lot, but occasionally. There are a good number of folks who are blunt and argumentative, which can be interpreted IRL as rude. There is a lot of sarcasm…not always meant lightheartedly.

There are also ppl who try to help, who try to stick up for a kid getting pummeled, and who try to keep it civil.

Is it a huge problem here? No. I think it just takes a while to get used to certain posters who rub you the wrong way. Ignore button will help with that if you can’t get used to them.

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@tigerrocks13 , nice to hear from you again. To me, this kind of thread is a CC junkie’s paradise:-)

@Postmodern IMO, 99% of the time, I try to be mindful of the fact that there are many kids here who have no clue and really just want a bit of guidance. I try to help those kids. But sometimes, there are jerky kids here who are disingenuous and full of themselves. They don’t actually want advice, they want an ego massage, and for someone to say, “it’s okay, your stats are amazing and yes, you will get into Stanford, don’t worry about that A- in AP physics.” It’s hard to be patient with those kids. And I will admit to being blunt with anyone when it is called for, but I feel no shame about that. These are soon to be young adults, about to venture into an adult world. No point in mollycoddling them. There is a difference between being blunt and being rude.

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Rarely is a student told not to apply someplace. BUT, to tell a student that a school is a high reach and that student needs other more realistic options – we would be doing a disservice to that 3.5 GPA student applying to Bowdoin not to have other choices that they really want to attend that are easier to get into. Because their chances ARE slim. I just checked the Common Data Set, and 84% of their applicants are in the top 10% of their graduating classes. So unless there is a lot of grade deflation at that high school, this student is in the bottom 16% GPA-wise for Bowdoin. Now… they might be hooked in some other way, have really high test scores, etc. But if not, there is a glaring weakness in their application. They might get in – but do you really want to assume that someone with a GPA in the bottom 15% of the accepted class has a strong chance? Their CHANCES aren’t good. That does not mean they won’t be accepted, but a prudent person would have backup plans that they can live with.

Many of the posters out here are looking at the Common Data Set for colleges, which a lot of new posters don’t even know about (and we try to steer them to it). I usually tell people where I am getting the info if I tell them they have a weakness in their applications. I really don’t think it is helpful for us to use anecdotes vs. data when students ask what their chances are. So @MiddleburyDad2, you might know someone or have a kid who got into Bowdoin with a 3.5. That doesn’t make it right to advise other posters that they have a good shot at it if they have that GPA.