Getting the most out of reading college forums

[Anonymous]

Agree CDS is useful, especially for admissions standards and general school stats. For other school info I would not underestimate digging around on the schools’ websites themselves. This may seem obvious but a lot of people seem to overlook it for some reason. Program information, course descriptions, prerequisites, number of students in a given major, sometimes class sizes, study abroad opportunities, costs, clubs, etc. The extent of the information varies, of course, but if you know how to dig you can find a lot of useful info. Public universities tend to have a lot of information in particular because of their public nature and requirements to disclose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:- common data set
- your own high school profile
- naviance (etc) data from your high school

for 95% of kids:

- take the 5 year matriculation data from your high school. often on your school profile. This is maybe 120 colleges.

- cross out all schools that are easy omits. you probably already know if your kid has any interest in places like Julliard or West Point or Purdue or Bennington. This should bring it down to 60-80 schools.

- Take out another 20 that are either under matches or overmatches ie Eastern Kentucky and Princeton.

- if you have any other limitations like geography or religion, limit the list further.

You should be able to start junior year with 50 colleges. Next step is do a couple tours locally even if your kid has no interest in staying local. See a big school, a small school, a Jesuit school .. whatever. Try to see a couple of schools in each band of big/small/urban/suburban. This is the biggest cut of all so take your time on this one during junior year. Will you care about sports culture, frats, etc. And also think about major here.

- By spring break junior year, you'll have a list of 20-25 schools. Run the NPCs. Go look at 5 or so that are near each other. and maybe a long weekend to look at a couple more. List is down to 15-20

By end of junior year, with grades and test scores in hand, you'll get realistic about money and odds. The list will be 10-15 and you're good to apply.

I dont like message forums, but I did like podcasts.

I would add that for the most part kids are only going to small regional colleges because of a sport.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reagan’s maxim: “Trust but verify” applies to any online college forum, including this one.

This is my MO when using any message boards. This thread has also provided a good example of the, imo, nonsense that goes on in any given thread in this forum - but that doesn’t mean there isn’t good intel to be gleaned, you just have to pick for it.

- The Common Data Set (CDS) fo any particular school can be found by googling the school’s name and the words “common data set”. For example, University of Michigan common data set.its a boring looking document full of info on application numbers, in vs out of state, male vs female, testing and GPA data, retention numbers, what parts of an application matter most to a school, ED data (sometimes), etc. I learned abut that here.

- I learned hear to have your DC apply to a rolling school early to get a hopeful acceptance under their belt - it can help reduce the stress going forward

- I learned that there are general rules for applying, but always exceptions.The kicker is that no one can truly tell you if your kid will be the exception so it’s a gamble (and imo this leads to a lot of topic arguments - one poster calling another a liar/spreading misinformation because their kid got into UVA with 2 years of foreign language, when the general recommendation is 4 years with the AP.)

- As someone mentioned College Confidential (CC) is great with dates and historical info on when decisions were released in previous years, etc.

- The application landscape can change from year to year and message boards can help you keep an eye on larger trends. Which might not ultimately matter your your kid, but for example, in our family my next kid wants the SEC big school experience, and I’ve learned schools that we might have considered safeties are deferring and WL kids they would have accepted a couple of years ago, so my DC needs to apply more broadly.

- I learned that the kids in your child’s class are their first comparison point when an application is reviewed. This helps explain why the stats for admission to a school like UVA or Tech are higher for kids from NoVa than in a more rural part of VA. This is one place where the CDS might not give you the full picture.

I’m sure there’s more but this is of the top of my head.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If it's a small college and they say they have a certain major ... how many students did they graduate in that major during the last year? It might be minuscule. It may not be an accredited program. Percentage of Greek participation, Percentage of OOS, Percentage of students living on campus (dorm availability), Stats of attending students (not just accepted students) Just some of the info

And where do you find that kind of major-specific info?

[Anonymous]

This forum was more useful three years ago when I went through the process with my oldest. Lately, it seems there are one or more trolls who are very active.

[Anonymous]

With 3 kids, I have used all three over the years. I found DCUM least helpful; almost waste of time.

[Anonymous]

- I learned here to have your DC apply to a rolling school early to get a hopeful acceptance under their belt - it can help reduce the stress going forward

“High stats kids should apply to early rolling safeties” is the best piece of conventional wisdom routinely dispensed by this board. The difference between spending December wondering where you will go to college and spending December wondering if you will go to college is massive.

[Anonymous]

YCBK podcast can be helpful, college vine is pretty accurate for predicting chances, listen to a couple audiobooks like The Price You Pay for College, plus searching CC, DCUM, and Reddit to research particular schools and you’ll be in pretty good shape

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

- I learned here to have your DC apply to a rolling school early to get a hopeful acceptance under their belt - it can help reduce the stress going forward

“High stats kids should apply to early rolling safeties” is the best piece of conventional wisdom routinely dispensed by this board. The difference between spending December wondering where you will go to college and spending December wondering if you will go to college is massive.

Thank you for correcting my typo in the quote. Wish I could edit the post. Typing without glasses. 🤓

[Anonymous]

You just have to jump in and start reading… anywhere/everywhere. It’s all overwhelming at first like all new endeavors but then it starts to fit together. You’ll get a sense of what’s real and useful and what is not but there is no shortcut because there is so much information.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I found better information via podcasts than message boards. The Yale podcast is really good. I like Your College Bound Kid - not everyone does. I don't like the Dartmouth one - other people do.

MIT and Georgia Tech both run blogs on this topic that are great.

And any data data - not anecdata - like from Common Data Set is solid.

Agreed. Both are really informative and very good. They have been very helpful understanding the process.

[Anonymous]

Go to ChatGPT, Google, or whatever and search for credible sources. There are a lot out there. Do your own research. We did that and got 2 kids in elite schools, both their first choices.

As others have said, some information on DCUM is helpful, but there is a lot of hating on certain schools and students. Even the most helpful information is better recognized if you’ve already done your own homework.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reagan’s maxim: “Trust but verify” applies to any online college forum, including this one.

This is my MO when using any message boards. This thread has also provided a good example of the, imo, nonsense that goes on in any given thread in this forum - but that doesn’t mean there isn’t good intel to be gleaned, you just have to pick for it.

- The Common Data Set (CDS) fo any particular school can be found by googling the school’s name and the words “common data set”. For example, University of Michigan common data set.its a boring looking document full of info on application numbers, in vs out of state, male vs female, testing and GPA data, retention numbers, what parts of an application matter most to a school, ED data (sometimes), etc. I learned abut that here.

- I learned hear to have your DC apply to a rolling school early to get a hopeful acceptance under their belt - it can help reduce the stress going forward

- I learned that there are general rules for applying, but always exceptions.The kicker is that no one can truly tell you if your kid will be the exception so it’s a gamble (and imo this leads to a lot of topic arguments - one poster calling another a liar/spreading misinformation because their kid got into UVA with 2 years of foreign language, when the general recommendation is 4 years with the AP.)

- As someone mentioned College Confidential (CC) is great with dates and historical info on when decisions were released in previous years, etc.

- The application landscape can change from year to year and message boards can help you keep an eye on larger trends. Which might not ultimately matter your your kid, but for example, in our family my next kid wants the SEC big school experience, and I’ve learned schools that we might have considered safeties are deferring and WL kids they would have accepted a couple of years ago, so my DC needs to apply more broadly.

- I learned that the kids in your child’s class are their first comparison point when an application is reviewed. This helps explain why the stats for admission to a school like UVA or Tech are higher for kids from NoVa than in a more rural part of VA. This is one place where the CDS might not give you the full picture.

I’m sure there’s more but this is of the top of my head.

For most schools though, all of the usual things are "very important". Is there a centralized place to see comments from kids after they've reviewed their admissions files (once matriculated) other than reddit? That would be MOST helpful. Where can we find that?

[Anonymous]

Truly understand holistic admissions....a lot of people on here don't and then cry bc their 1580/Val was rejected early from Yale.

Teacher LOR and essays are the whole game once you meet a baseline threshold. Make sure there's narrative coherence btw everything.

Good thread here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1k98ye2/reflection_as_i_see_26_freaking_out_on_here/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:New to this.

I’ve seen college confidential and reddits applying to College forum.

What do you read each for, and what else do you read that’s informative? And informative about what?

Thanks.

My family is now past the college application stage, and I’m not sure if Niche still works this way. But, when my son was still applying, not just studying, the free Niche signup account was very helpful. My son’s school didn’t have any useful admissions data, and Niche had wonderful scattergrams broken down by intended major.

I also thought that everything else in all of the Niche entries was useful and interesting. Example: Each entry includes a list of peer schools. If you dig deep, you can find average professor pay, and how many graduates end up with each major.

My son handled almost everything about the application process himself, but it was comforting to see in the scattergrams that him choosing an impractical major (history) gave him an a practical admissions boost.

I also think that the Reddit admissions results subreddit is useful, because it can give you a sense of who really gets into various schools, how much aid people get, and what good activities and awards look like

But I think the real point of forums like these is that they’re like watching college basketball for people with no interest in basketball. I can enter a small Eden where the big problem is people being too mean to colleges I’ve never actually seen, and one hot controversy is whether my alma mater belongs in tiers 2, 3 or 4, as opposed to a world where my country might invade Greenland.

So, the truth is that a lot of what’s posted in a forum like this is about the posters’ inner demons and has nothing to do with getting into or staying in college.