I think the “Colleges that were crossed off or moved up after visiting” thread is an extremely valuable one for families looking at different colleges at all levels. Definitely not just for the “elite” schools group.
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IMO, the best thread in the entire forum.
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Rule of thumb is that Gen Z doesn’t use Facebook, so those are 99% parents
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Why do you guys even want many actual applicants here? It’s the parents who steer the process most of the time, at least for the schools which are worth going to a forum to research. My D25 would never spend any time here, neither would anyone from her high school. The value of this site is for the parents.
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To answer the question in the OP…I don’t think the name of this forum should be changed.
Re: parents vs student users. I came here as a parent seeking ideas for CA colleges for my second child. I’m from the east coast and had no ideas. Luckily another parent responded with suggestions and then others chimed in. I gave the list to my kid and she took it from there.
Re: student involvement…my kid gave back by giving personal tours to a handful of CC families and their students. She was happy to help out. She also wrote a couple for blog posts about her college for the first parent who offered it as a suggestion…as this parent, it turned out, was a college counselor.
My kid never had an account here, but she would answer questions I sent to her willingly…she was very grateful to learn about her undergrad school here!
And it was/is not an elite school.
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I don’t know if people really care if it’s the applicant or the parent who comes here. What I care about is that people with any level of student feel comfortable coming here asking for advice and participating in a variety of threads.
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Absolutely, I feel that we benefited a lot from the relevant discussions here.
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True story: many many many years ago I was having a CC conversation with someone who then took it backchannel and I was giving what I thought was helpful advice. This went on for a day or two. Then one night at the dinner table shortly thereafter, younger son starts quoting that conversation! Turns out he had made up an account pretending to be a father and was conversing with me and yanking my chain! Good thing I was being helpful and positive the whole time Lol
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I think what frustrates me most about the forum are the people who post “how to get my child into an Ivy/T20”. It frustrates me to see what feels like just blind chasing prestige - those schools are not the same, so lumping them together suggests you just want what someone tells you is “best”, regardless of whether it is best For You. But the responses to that are part of why I think this is a valuable forum - for parents who don’t know (a) how unrealistic those schools are, given the number of available slots and the number of well qualified candidates and (b) how many other great, potentially better, choices there might be out there - those conversations are invaluable. The challenge, though, in those conversations is how to educate without sounding like a know-it-all or mean or snarky.
I also think sometimes people fall into a defensiveness trap - and they need to stay away from that. So for example, if someone says “getting into a T20 is really hard, and maybe not all that for what you’re interested in, how about school X, Y or Z” then sometimes people who love that T20 school start arguing back about how it so IS “all that” and totally worth it, because they ARE paying the cost, or they HAVE pushed for whatever. (Same can be true for any contentious issue, I just picked one.) I think people have a natural tendency to defend themselves and their choices, but they need to remember, that’s not necessarily useful to thread orginators. And when people say something else might be a good or better choice, it’s not saying that any other choice is bad, it’s just offering another point of view for someone to consider.
I will also admit, there is one poster here who consistently rubs me the wrong way. I think they are trying to educate and be helpful, but somehow their tone just comes off as mean or dismissive to me. But I’m an adult, and I know how to ignore things on the internet that frustrate me. So I don’t respond to the person, or I stay out of threads that frustrate me, or I just walk away before I say something snarky myself.
I think as long as posters remember to try to stay polite, open to other’s views and interests and not dismissive, and focused on thread topic and not grinding an axe of their own, then this is and can be a great place to talk and learn.
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“T20” is a declining construct that perseveres mainly because of parental ambitions. The kids know which schools are good, academically and culturally. Some of the current T20 schools are there, some are not. One thing I learned this year.
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I like that one too (and the off shoot where people discuss points brought up) but I do think even that thread leans heavily toward elite/LAC colleges. I silently cheer when someone posts about state U’s in the Midwest or small rural colleges in PA. Even the essay reviews this year seemed to be elite-heavy.
There used to be a thread in here for students with GPA’s in the 3.0 -3.5 range but I haven’t seen it pop up in a while, so I don’t know if it’s active.
If it’s true that parents & students applying to T100++ schools feel embarrassed or intimidated posting here, then I think that’s very unfortunate but I don’t know how CC admins can fix it other than finding a way to promote threads that highlight those types of colleges, even if no one is posting in them. It might be intimidating to come to CC for the first time and see so many “Chance me for T20 1550 SAT/34 ACT” threads on the main page. I can imagine them thinking, “Oh, this site is not for me” and not clicking further to find information.
I don’t see a problem with repeating relevant information from thread to thread, but I wish more posters would take the time to read the previous responses and refrain from posting what has already been said somewhere else in the thread and perhaps just hit the “like” button instead.
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This isn’t really about level of colleges, but I think some posters here scare people away in the way they talk about test scores. I cringe every time I see someone post “with a little studying and prep you can get that 25 up to a 30” or a 30 up to a 34. No not everyone can do that. Just cause your kid did, doesn’t mean everyone can. If it was that easy the score distributions would be very different than what they are. Fact is, not everyone can do well on those tests and not everyone can raise their scores much. I know people are trying to be encouraging but so many here had kids that scored well and so they think it’s easy and anyone can do it. Not everyone can.
Last little pet peeve. A kid comes one with average stats and says they are interested in economics. People post links to the best economic schools which are all elite type schools the kid is not going to get into. That’s not being helpful. It’s just being discouraging.
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The obvious reason why there are so many chance me threads for T20 schools is because those are the ones with <10% acceptance rates.
If you want to attend a school with 70% acceptance rate, the probability is in your favor (if you have good grades) so there’s less likelihood you have to ask for advice on whether you’ll be admitted.
Of course no one knows what the magic formula is to get into the T20 schools so the entire thread falls into a similar set of responses about costs, reaches, safeties etc.
Chance me: Public School, 1550 SAT, 3.98 UW, EC- clubs/few regional awards, volunteering. T20 schools
Answer: You are an impressive candidate but these schools are reaches for everyone. By the way, T20 schools are all very different. Why are you applying to these schools?
Rinse and repeat.
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Students and their parents are ever hopeful though, lol
That’s often an appropriate response, especially since the chance me question is unanswerable. Many students and parents don’t know what they don’t know.
For example, they might not think about cost, or know about NPCs, or know how to build a college list. If a family needs merit and can’t afford to be full pay, all the need based only schools come off the list…just to take on example that happens here with regularity. That’s far more helpful feedback than posters bloviating about a kid’s chances at highly rejective schools, when no one here is seeing the student’s entire app.
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That’s all true. However, oftentimes, we see 50 responses when the OP left the building after the 3rd post and everyone is just discussing amongst themselves.
I find it amusing when that happens.
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I also got a lot of insight from the old “Stupidest Reason Child Won’t Look at College” thread. Choosing a college is probably the biggest decision a kid will make at this age, and this thread was always a good reminder that they are, in fact, still kids.
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I think one of the greatest things we try to do is encourage folks to create a varied list of colleges in terms of their competitiveness for admission. I very often link the old, but relevant thread that was about Andison. He landed on his feet, but it took a gap year and a horrible senior year of high school when he got no acceptances (and also had no real sure things on his application list).
That being said, we need to listen to the student and parent information provided. If a family gives a specific geographic region, we need to help them find colleges in that region. If they say they can be full pay anywhere, we need to honor that and believe them. Whatever parameters a family puts forth, we need to listen to…and if we think they need other ideas, we should ask them if they want them…and then listen to their response.
Believe it or not, some kids and families don’t want information about elite colleges 
. And they are willing to fund college anywhere because they can and want to .
Not everyone is looking for exclusive colleges.
I want to add to my above post. Coincidentally, my kid’s first private music instructor in college was a CC member at the time. There have been other similar coincidents on this forum…and they have been helpful.
Another thing I like are the AMAs done about various professions. Let’s just say, none of my degrees are from “exclusive colleges” but I was happy to contribute.
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This rings true for me. My kids never posted on CC, and probably never really looked at the site, but they were very aware of what I was doing on CC, and appreciative of the insights and information. CC was incredibly important for me/us, as I hadn’t lived in the US in many years and was way behind the times. I also think there is probably more student lurking going on than we may be aware. I recall that some of my son’s classmates spotted my posts and ID’d me immediately (not too many Japanese sprinters at Denison). He was, fortunately, amused.
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Add me to the chorus of posters who feel that not listening to what the original poster says in their post regarding location, financial situation, etc. should be respected. In my opinion, posts about schools in other areas outside of their requested region or cost effective schools when the original Poster explicitly states that they don’t want to discuss , e.g. west coast schools or cost is not a factor, it should be respected. Otherwise, those posts are off topic.
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I think sometimes that happens because people respond before reading all of the other responses, so you end up with multiple responses saying the same thing.
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