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:
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Surprises in Undergrad Schools Producing Doctorates: Punching Above Their Weight
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Colleges with Strong Pre-Med Programs and Acceptance Rates Above 20%
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Colleges with Strong T14 Law Records & Admissions Rates Above 20%
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WSJ Rankings 2025 (posts #8, #58-61)
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?