Should College Confidential be renamed Exclusive College?

College Confidential Community
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In College Confidential’s About Us page it says,

“College is a big deal, and if there is ever a time in the lives of young people and their families when knowledge can make or break, it’s around decisions in higher education. But when that information is needed most, it often seems available the least. Families of the college-bound may feel like they’re on their own. And alone, we can only know so much. But what if it could be different? Imagine knowing what others know.”

Although the Chance Me/Match Me threads skew towards very strong students who are seeking admission to schools with low acceptance rates, I have always believed that the forum is intended to be helpful for all students and families who are seeking a higher education, even if an exclusive college isn’t in the cards.

As regulars often share on the boards, the vast majority of applicants (including very strong applicants) who are applying to schools with single-digit acceptance rates will be rejected. Some might call these schools low probability schools; others call them highly rejective schools. Regardless of what they’re called, they will not be an option for the vast majority of high school seniors come April 1. Thus, I would call them exclusive schools.

At various times I have tried to highlight schools with higher acceptance rates that do better on certain metrics than might be expected, as a means of showing schools with some academic strengths that don’t get nearly as much attention as the schools with sub-20% acceptance rates. Some examples are linked below:

I elaborated a bit in one of my posts on the WSJ thread about my theory of the utility of various rankings:

In almost all of these examples, there are a number of people who take issue with the positive mention of schools with higher acceptance rates. Not everyone goes on for doctorates, what was the quality of the graduate school attended or the field studied, the weights for the rankings should have been different, the source of the data is less than ideal, etc.

In none of these examples have I tried to make it out as though these data points were the be-all, end-all, perfect source of information. I have indicated that the schools getting positive mentions might be worth a closer look. I try to mention various caveats and/or clarify, and yet the same thing keeps happening.

If College Confidential is really intended to be focused solely on exclusive schools (i.e. those with low admit rates) and then throwing in a few non-exclusive schools as safeties, then I think that should be made clear. Renaming the forum Exclusive Colleges might do the trick, or perhaps changing the About Us page.

But if it is intended to be a source for college-bound students and families who need information on higher education, then I think we do a disservice to those individuals by denigrating and nitpicking anything that mentions less exclusive colleges in a positive light, as I also suspect it may discourage people from posting and having as much traffic as CC would like.

So my question is, what is the point of College Confidential? What is the audience that the forum is trying to serve? Does the forum’s name and About Us page capture that information appropriately? If so, what changes, if any, should be made to forum rules?

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Interesting question! I wonder sometimes if College Confidential isn’t hurt by a few things. The first being what you’ve highlighted, there are many posters who are extremely high achieving, or the parent of an extremely high achieving student who either have no interest in schools that are below the top rung or look down on posters who do, so they leave rather quickly or only frequent the 3.0-3.4 GPA threads (highly recommend) or the individual year threads, which are great. I think many CC posters are high SES and come from the Northeast or parts of California where academic achievement and the “best” college is a part of the culture. The popularity of the NESCAC thread is a good example.

It is amazing how different in can be in other parts of the country, my son was accepted into Gonzaga a few weeks ago and my friends here in Washington were super impressed! I think Reddit is even worse honestly, it seems to be mostly high stats international students or the children of immigrants who have set very high standards for themselves.

The second hurdle, and this is not going to win me any friends, is that CC is dominated by a handful of posters who have mostly been here for a very long time. Look at the popularity of the Jimmy Carter or the Grandparent threads! They have strong opinions, can be very helpful, but often are repeating themselves and come across as brash in many threads. I think they’re just comfortable and it might be hard to remember that for many people, this is their first foray into the college search and maybe they didn’t come here before doing a lot of research first, maybe they’re not ready to share their finances, maybe they just are looking for a good school with a fun basketball team or a dance major.

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I sure hope this forum isn’t all about exclusive colleges. That’s not why I joined, and it’s not why many others are here. And it’s why so many of us emphasize the need for a balanced list of admissions applications.

Please….do not make this all about exclusive colleges. You will lose a number of long time contributors to this site if you do that.

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Hmmm…100% this.

I came to CC a few years ago when kid #1 was applying to college and quickly noticed that because she was not a 4.0/5.0 student with Ivy aspirations it was hard to break into some forums. Also, TBH, I rarely mention the school she selected, as it is almost NEVER mentioned on CC despite being a CCTL that ranks highly on many lists (and is an amazing place!). This is probably a ‘me’ issue - but I don’t talk about it a lot because people don’t seem to care if it’s not a T20. I’m in one of those California ‘best college’ bubbles.

I’ve been very grateful to @AustenNut and many other contributors who were always very welcoming and helpful. But even today on a thread I was slightly apoplectic from a post about someone’s kid ‘unfairly’ being shut out of a coveted admission. (And don’t get me started on one of the Ivy threads I happened to peep into - what a heaping pile of privilege over there!)

And to @Izzy74 's point, there are posters who are grandparents giving ‘advice’ about certain schools. I’m on my second kid and I don’t think things are even the same as they were 2 years ago. I’ve really appreciated posters who came along just a couple years before me or have kids looking at the same schools at the same time - @worriedmomucb definitely comes to mind as a valuable contributor.

All this to say that you can’t beat the help from others CURRENTLY going through the same things in any of the forums (retirement, parent caretaker, college admissions). If we want new members to stay around and contribute it would be nice if some of the crankier old timers could tone down their know-it-all attitudes and just breathe.

I try to welcome new posters and encourage the kids on here who post. All in all it’s a great community, but there are definitely peeps who are high achieving type A’s who are in it to win it or stick arounders who have a LOT to say and you have to navigate them.

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I for sure think this community is doing its absolute best work when it helps kids, and sometimes parents, find colleges which are not among the most famous, not necessarily high on any generic rankings list, or so on, but really make sense for that specific kid. Maybe it is academically, or in terms of cost, or something non-academic, or location, or so on. But one or more things in combination help that kid see how that college could be great for them.

This is going to be a little complicated to express, but I feel like sometimes there is a dynamic where people are trying to fight against the idea you have to go to some specific short list of schools to be excited about college. And I think that can be a good message. But then sometimes it feels like it expands out into attacking any sort of preference between colleges, or at least maybe outside of what they see as the only reasonable bases for decision.

Like maybe someone pushes really hard for a kid or parent to only care about cost, or whether an engineering program is ABET accredited, or so on.

And again I think often the original intention was good, but they are basically in a position of arguing against the kid or parent actually being excited about anything else they might mention.

So this is the tricky balance. On the hand, I agree we should be fighting against an artificial scarcity mindset, that only a few colleges are worth being excited about. But I think we should not be insisting that all colleges are therefore completely interchangeable, such that it is wrong to be excited about particular colleges for your own personal reasons.

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I didn’t really answer the question as much as share my experience, sorry.

I generally feel that the name and the About Us page does appropriately capture the essence of the forum. I’m not sure that any changes to the rules will prohibit the kind of exclusivity that’s the norm.

As I mentioned, I tend not to discuss my kid’s T400 (T500?) college, and maybe part of the answer is for those of us who have been reticent in the face of exclusivity to be more bold about discussing our kids choices?

D23’s HS principal greeted us freshman parents at orientation and the first thing he said was “There are over 2,000 4-year colleges in the United States and at least one of them is right for your student.” I never forgot that. It’s a message I wish more HS parents could hear.

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I actually HAVE talked about a college in my family that I doubt has a ranking at all, but which gave my husband a fabulous and rewarding career. I went to a public university for both undergrad and grad school…and I’ve mentioned them both and neither is anything special in the rankings.

I think it’s important to have a variety of perspectives on this forum. And I see this on multiple threads in many places.

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No one is under any obligation to share more than they are comfortable sharing, but for sure the greater the variety of stories, the better.

Unconventional success stories are great. I am dead sure I am not the only one who actually loves to hear about a kid doing well at a college I may know little to nothing about.

But stories of struggles and disappointments are also great, in their own way. That is what real life looks like, and I definitely think it helps for people to hear about others going through these things.

Again, zero obligation. But I know whatever people choose to share is going to be valued by many.

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For me, an appropriate name for College Confidential would be College Knowledge.

I spend time on CC to help families, learn from a few members, and debate when I definitely know something that should change views.

The high achieving OPs do not bother me nearly as much as posters who refuse to have evolved their thinking over the years and/or listen to the few members I learn from because they clearly understand things and remain current. So much has changed with rankings, Test Optional, in and out-of-favor colleges. The trends have never been more interesting. We just need to embrace them.

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I agree that different perspectives can be helpful. And we should remember too that there are many, many lurkers on the site who hopefully glean a lot of useful information, even if they never post a single post. I think, too, that many posters lurk and read a lot before they ever post their first post. So repeating the same information to every “new” poster and not giving them the benefit of the doubt that they have likely been reading for a while can be unhelpful.

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In case it is not clear, I very much hope that this forum is not just about exclusive colleges and those who want to attend them.

It breaks my heart when I hear of people who don’t feel comfortable sharing their stories (or those of their kids) because they don’t feel they “measure up” enough to get affirmation or understanding from the majority of the board. I still recall a parent who felt uncomfortable sharing on the main parent board that their kid was invited to join National Honor Society and that it was a big accomplishment for the kid, and remembering that instance still brings tears to my eyes. (The parent did share that on the year’s 3.0-3.4 thread, and I echo the recommendation of those threads.)

I appreciate so much of the knowledge and experience of long-time posters. Even if they no longer have a student who is currently going through the process, the brainstorming of potential schools or sharing some of the historical trends from the schools is helpful. Moreover, some of them have professional expertise that is often relevant to the students/families who come here and post.

Additionally, I think there are a number of regular posters who will try and help students develop a well-developed list of colleges at a range of selectivity levels. Oftentimes I tend to focus on schools in the toss-up to extremely likely categories because the student/family already has plenty of low and lower probability schools to consider, but if they don’t, or I think there’s a particularly good addition to that list, I will certainly mention it.

I have more thoughts, but will break this post in two so as not to be too verbose in one post.

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Of course not. College Confidential is a brand, don’t change it. Of course people who come here come for information about the more selective schools. I did and I learned a lot. Adapt it to get more interest from actual applicants rather than parents. That probably means a little less political correctness and more naming and describing things in Gen Z terms.

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That said, however, I have become frustrated at the tendency by some to be so critical of any positive call-outs of less selective schools. Below is an edit that ended up needing to be made to the OP on the schools hitting above their weight in the getting doctorates thread mentioned above:

This means that posts #23-64 and #66-138 and #140-194 were all quibbles about the methodology or explanations of the intent of the thread. Very few readers that are actually interested in the thread topic are likely to wade through all the argumentation to get to the substance of the topic.

This does not mean that valid critiques are not warranted. But having the same (or substantially similar) criticisms repeated ad nauseum are not helpful. So if someone wants to indicate the limitations of LinkedIn as a source, or the caliber of grad schools, or whatever, that’s fine. But when it turns into the majority of the thread, then the thread is completely derailed.

And when threads that are designed to help a larger portion of high school seniors identify schools that could be a good match for them are derailed, seemingly because of the lack of focus on exclusive schools, it makes me wonder about the purpose of the forum.

Thus, I would propose that an additional guideline be added to the forum’s existing rules, perhaps under Discussion, Not Debate. No more than X number of posts reiterating the same point, regardless of the author. Although this had been proposed at some point in a different discussion about the forum and I saw the utility to have multiple posters emphasize a point, when it completely derails a thread, I think it causes more harm than good. Perhaps just using the :+1:t4: and :100: to emphasize which posts one mostly agrees with if there have already been X number of posts on the topic. Or perhaps the :-1:t4: icon can be added so people can voice their continued disagreement on a topic.

Thoughts?

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I believe the thumbs down icon was given the thumbs down :-1: a long time ago.

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I am not attached to the thumbs down icon and open to other suggestions if people want to be able to add an icon to indicate their disagreement with a post, should they feel it necessary.

But if the board prefers to only have icons of agreement, that is fine by me as well.

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Im very open with my kids lists which featured several less talked about schools!

Happily normal here!

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Oh my god, if there was a way to enforce limiting the number of posts making the same point I would 100% support it. Sometimes it reads to me like bludgeoning an OP, especially a kid who’s posting. I get irritated at those posters who feel the need to repeat a point for the 8th time. Why???!

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I consider myself pretty well informed on college stuff, but I was so appreciative of your response when I posted a Q about my daughter’s college search and interests. We’d visited schools and she had a favorite and some specific criteria. I shared those criteria and you immediately came back with such a great list of schools of widely varying selectivity. I looked at all of them and got a broader sense of the ways different schools approach my kid’s areas of interest and added some to her list to consider. In the end, she got into her ED school, but I am still grateful for the way you broadened my thinking. This may not be the right place for this response, but I wanted you to know!

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I think the point here is to educate. The hardest part is when a student or parent is only applying to all reach schools and you know the kid is likely to be shut out. Happens yearly. But I really do think the majority of people are appreciative of the knowledge base here. So many people /parents just don’t have a clue on finances and the “we will make it work out” theory as we all know doesn’t usually add up. I think people will take what they want from the knowledge on here. It’s tough when your a parent and you think or have been told your kid is all that, and then we are trying to be more realistic. I actually like focusing on the students with “lessor” stats, etc since I was that kid. Also there are plenty of families with much lessor means and they always seem appreciative of the advice. I think though sometimes we collectively might try to hard. A family is saying they can afford any priced school and then a host of people question that. OK, maybe question it once but 5 times in a row? No.

Honestly, some people kinda do need convincing though. I see some threads that the “regulars” are giving great advice but the tenor of the thread isn’t moving the needle. I will usually post something like “You got the A team here giving you advice” xxxxxxx. Lol. Sometimes people just don’t want to be realistic.

But we also forget. There are a ton of onlookers that don’t post that are also getting that great advice. We all get thanked yearly from people saying so.

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As a longtime poster, I will take the advice and try to step back. I wouldn’t want anyone feeling like they are being bullied.

BUT- it’s a tad disingenuous for someone to post asking for advice- and then pushing back when the advice is clearly not going in the direction they want. Kid insists that only a “Bachelor’s in Neuroscience” degree will work and therefore the 80K in loans that will be required for the narrow set of schools offering that specific degree is an absolute necessity. You then have ACTUAL neuroscientists pointing out that you can major in bio, minor in psych or cog sci, take a few genetics and chem classes and BOOM- you’re ready for a grad program in Neuro. And then the kid pushes back with various “facts” from Reddit, their neighbor who is two years older and therefore knows everything about matters scientific, etc.

I could go on, but don’t want to be accused of the pile on. So I won’t. I will try and refrain from posting multiple times going forward. But it’s just a sad reality that parents and kids are woefully uninformed about many different career paths, and when posters who actually do this stuff for a living try and help, we get accused of elitism, being know- it- alls, etc.

Fact- you can get a job in marketing without a degree called “marketing”. Fact- you can get a job in Corporate Communications without a degree named “communications”. And before you push back that I’m old, basing this experience on something that happened 30 years ago… this is based on two offers I made in the month of December 2024. So weeks old experience, not decades old experience.

But sure- ask Reddit.

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