<p>Hey, I posted a thread under “Community & Forum Issues” calling for the elimination of the chances forum. If you guys could lend your support there, that’d be great.</p>
<p>Actually, if the Chances forum were eliminated, students would be posting their questions on other fora. I appreciate that the Parents’ Forum and Cafe are not inundated with that sort of questions.</p>
<p>acinva: (sigh)here we go. The “parents” on the thread to which you were referring as being argumentative because they were quoting facts from the catalogue, etc., were simply trying to clarify the issue. You are correct, the student posters were, by and large, expressing feelings, not facts. Therein lay the difficulty. And my concern arose from the resulting tone of the thread. </p>
<p>And the fact is that the students of the parent posters on that thread do indeed attend class on the campus of that university. We will drop it there.</p>
<p>Marite is right. Maybe there needs to be a big disclaimer on that forum and suggestions for how to really analyze their chances?</p>
<p>I think many of the same old folks are here but giving the site less time. There are also many newcomers with new attitudes. I seriously feel anyone should do their own homework carefully and make their own decisions. A site is nice but it is only a site. After all , would you let anyone here buy your shoes? So maybe all should shop for one’s own college.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I think that anyone who really thinks that anonymous strangers can predict their admisson chances is such an idiot that no disclaimer would help them.</p></li>
<li><p>I am glad for the Chances forum because I don’t want the other boards innundated with those idiotic posts.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The posts on CC that most annoy me are cheaters who try to use CC to get their homework done and the people who haven’t done any basic reseach and are asking folks here to do things like tell them where they should apply or tell them what colleges offer their majors.</p>
<p>Earlier in the year, I came close to leaving the fora for good because of the attitudes displayed by some posters in the parents forum. There are some touchy topics that seemed to bring out some real flames, some personal attacks, responses like “how dare you accuse me of…” when no personal accusation was intended. This did not happen in the early days, and we had some real porkers around then.</p>
<p>The changes I see:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>pre-change, the moderators would post public messages on the boards to some posters to “cool it” or be banned. They would also publicly ban some folks. I think this helped folks be aware of the moderators and expectations.</p></li>
<li><p>posters were less PC then.</p></li>
<li><p>posters were more tolerant of divergent views.</p></li>
<li><p>with fewer posters, it was easier to keep track of who was who. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Yea, I rarely venture out of the parents forum. I cannot believe the stuff that gets posted regarding chances. As if any of us non admissions professionals have the foggiest idea regarding any one person’s chances!</p>
<p>
About all anyone can do is give you one of three: reach, match, or safety. Then again, a quick scan through the school’s website to find their median SATs and class ranks will give you that info, too.</p>
<p>I took a look over at the Chances thread - I am a newbie and mainly stay on the parent fora - and agree with other posters that something ought to done about the Chances thread. Like Ariesathena just posted, students can get the basic information off of the college websites or from the CB College Handbook - other than that there is no real point in asking basically clueless people what the chances of admission might be. A disclaimer is a good idea but I don’t think many people will bother to read it or pay much attention to it. </p>
<p>Since I wouldn’t want the parent forum to be swamped with chances requests either, another idea would be to demote or degrade “Chances” from a forum to a sub-forum - such as the college search and selection forum. That way, people can still post their stats if they want to and ask all the serious to silly questions that they want but the posts will be both easier to ignore and (as I now know about the parent cafe) the posts won’t count in the post tally. The parent cafe is a fun place to post, attracts a lot of posters so it would not be as if the thread was banished. If someone wants to pose a serious question about programs or concerns about the balance of safety, match and reach schools on their college list, or about ECs etc. they would do as they do now and post elsewhere to get more serious answers.</p>
<p>The ‘chances’ threads have always left me scratching my head, too. I think you’d have a better chance of getting an accurate medical diagnosis on-line than you would an admissions decision (more variables to consider in admissions).</p>
<p>I am flummoxed, too, by questions like “what will the financial aid office say” when the only answer that matters is the one you’d get if you went straight to the financial aid office in question (they’re all just variations on the ‘chances’ theme). Maybe it’s a matter of wording. If someone posted “how should I bring this up to a financial aid officer?” (s)he might get useful tips or stories from posters.</p>
<p>The other thing I’ve noticed is it’s very easy to be misunderstood on line. There are no gestures (despite the silly icons) or other things that help relay meaning like we have in a face to face. I’ve given up trying to explain myself when I feel I’m misunderstood - it’s not worth the typing.</p>
<p>I’m a student, and I have been on this site for awhile. Like another poster said earlier, some comments made me want to leave this site. I have noticed that on a lot of the other forums (not the Parents Forum) that students are willing to do ANYTHING to get into their dreams school…from tweeking the truth about their ECs from lying about their race. </p>
<p>Whatever happened to integrity and honesty in the college admissions process?? </p>
<p>I have seen so many posts about people asking what race they are (ummm…apparently they sure weren’t confused about it when they filled out the PSAT, ACT, and SAT questionare which asked for their race), multiple threads of students who are considering applying ED and thinking about backing out at the last minute, and useless chances threads (just because one got a 2300 doesn’t mean that one is going to go to a community college!!). I have also seen many OPs from the Chances threads get all offended, when someone gives them a dose of reality about admissions (when a school has an 8% acceptance rate, one has to have back-ups and love those back-ups !!), but these OPs don’t get it.</p>
<p>On the flipside, I have seen many students (who are still in high school) acting all high and mighty, as if they were part of the admissions committee, telling other posters not to even apply to the school, sometimes resorting name-calling or making offensive remarks (trust me those offensive remarks cannot be mistaken as misunderstood, they meant what they meant…those remarks are about as clear as zidane’s head butt into the italian player 
). I remember that two years ago, there were the occasional posts that stirred up emotions, but atleast the majority of the posts were civil and didn’t resort to personal attacks. One might even say that CC was kind of a family, yes there were some arguments, but when it came down to it, people knew the differences between constructive criticism/heated debates from downright offensive posts.</p>
<p>That’s just my two cents…</p>