Why are people so weirdly mean and competitive on this forum in particular ?

[Anonymous]

What I don’t get is the certainty people have about quality of schools. Unless you have attended more than one, there’s no way you can honestly compare one against another. The splitting of hairs of Cornell over Brown or whatever is so stupid.

[Anonymous]

I think there’s a lot of concern among UMC parents about whether their kids will do as “well” as they did. Plus college is a culmination of a thousand parenting decisions made over years. What ECs, what academics, how hard you will push and tutor for grades. Public or private school. Which school pyramid. Parents, myself included, need to feel like they made the right choices.

If you and you kid sacrificed pieces of their childhood (and a lot of money) for a T20, you need to believe it’s worth it. If you help a kid who struggled academically or social emotionally, you need to believe they will become happy, healthy, products results at their CTCL school. If you are like me and every decision was hard and you put a lot of thought into each step, you need to believe that that non T20 but well respected good fit colleges are places where your kid will be happy and productive and accomplish their goals.

But, when you are talking about parenting choices and the future of your kids, most people’s natural response is to dig in and insist their path and their choices is the “right” one.

[Anonymous]

I’ve been on other anonymous college forums and people are pretty cruel on here by comparison

How do people find the energy to write paragraphs of hate towards fairly unremarkable schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I don’t get is the certainty people have about quality of schools. Unless you have attended more than one, there’s no way you can honestly compare one against another. The splitting of hairs of Cornell over Brown or whatever is so stupid.

OMG!!!! Thank you. And, presumably these debaters think they’re qualified to attend such schools. Otherwise, why the interest? Ironically, such “smart” people are missing the forest for the trees. If I was on an Ivy admissions team and heard these people debate, they wouldn’t get admitted because they lack good judgment.

[Anonymous]

I find nearly all of the education-related forums to be astonishingly angry. Brings out the worst in parenting, I suppose.

Spend some time in the travel forum - lots of useful information and less anger.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, it’s really alarming to me. What do you get from berating a family or young adult and their choices, etc? It’s awful.

For the same reason, Twitter is a cesspool of crazy angry virtue signaling lowlifes. It's fun and you can do it anonymously. These folks would never do this with their real identity

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, it’s really alarming to me. What do you get from berating a family or young adult and their choices, etc? It’s awful.

For the same reason, Twitter is a cesspool of crazy angry virtue signaling lowlifes. It's fun and you can do it anonymously. These folks would never do this with their real identity

+1 million

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are so stupid.

You are gross.

Exhibit #1, immaturity. Life lesson: refer to ideas presented as stupid or gross. Referring to the person as stupid or gross is juvenile and off-putting. If you want to move the conversation forward, you may go on to explain why you think the ideas are stupid or gross.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s caused by disappointment in their kids and maybe themselves. It causes a lot of scapegoating and ill-will toward those who succeeded in getting into the coveted schools.

There is also an anti-intellectual movement among the right-wing conservatives which causes them to troll here even if they don’t have college-aged kids.

This. But the toddler forum is terribly competitive too!

True. Parents start to see in toddlerhood that their child isn’t a genius and other kids are ahead.

Parenting twins can a be a little short of harrowing in the early years, but it may also make one a little more sober about what lies ahead - there are two samples every day, doing their thing. Sometimes they may be in the same developmental phase and sometimes they are wildly divergent. You learn to identify and respect their strengths and challenges. Ideally you take those insights and are more compassionate when you interact with others. Granted, there are probably some parents on here who attended T5 schools and their offspring did/do as well. But that ship has sailed for many with legacy carrying a varying degree of weight at top schools. Sometimes I think the folks who cleave the most vociferously to the rankings on this thread or throw verbal bombs at any school T30 and up are (1) have toddlers and no clue, (2) children who attended college more than ten years ago, or (3) have kids who got lucky in the college lottery.

GL to everyone and hope for more compassion and understanding in the new year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s caused by disappointment in their kids and maybe themselves. It causes a lot of scapegoating and ill-will toward those who succeeded in getting into the coveted schools.

There is also an anti-intellectual movement among the right-wing conservatives which causes them to troll here even if they don’t have college-aged kids.

This. But the toddler forum is terribly competitive too!

True. Parents start to see in toddlerhood that their child isn’t a genius and other kids are ahead.

Parenting twins can a be a little short of harrowing in the early years, but it may also make one a little more sober about what lies ahead - there are two samples every day, doing their thing. Sometimes they may be in the same developmental phase and sometimes they are wildly divergent. You learn to identify and respect their strengths and challenges. Ideally you take those insights and are more compassionate when you interact with others. Granted, there are probably some parents on here who attended T5 schools and their offspring did/do as well. But that ship has sailed for many with legacy carrying a varying degree of weight at top schools. Sometimes I think the folks who cleave the most vociferously to the rankings on this thread or throw verbal bombs at any school T30 and up are (1) have toddlers and no clue, (2) children who attended college more than ten years ago, or (3) have kids who got lucky in the college lottery.

GL to everyone and hope for more compassion and understanding in the new year.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think there’s a lot of concern among UMC parents about whether their kids will do as “well” as they did. Plus college is a culmination of a thousand parenting decisions made over years. What ECs, what academics, how hard you will push and tutor for grades. Public or private school. Which school pyramid. Parents, myself included, need to feel like they made the right choices.

If you and you kid sacrificed pieces of their childhood (and a lot of money) for a T20, you need to believe it’s worth it. If you help a kid who struggled academically or social emotionally, you need to believe they will become happy, healthy, products results at their CTCL school. If you are like me and every decision was hard and you put a lot of thought into each step, you need to believe that that non T20 but well respected good fit colleges are places where your kid will be happy and productive and accomplish their goals.

But, when you are talking about parenting choices and the future of your kids, most people’s natural response is to dig in and insist their path and their choices is the “right” one.

This is the correct answer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The most truthful answer is that males ages 17-23 have discovered this specific forum on DCUM (by doing internet searches of certain college names. )

They’re the same juvenile, cocky, hubris-filled jerks you see populating College Confidential and Reddit. The language and ad hominem attacks are identical and easy to identify.

It’s all about killing the competition and swinging your little d around to show strength.

+1

It's this. You can tell this also by the fact they start new anti-athlete threads once or twice a week like clockwork (I'm not an athlete).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there’s a lot of concern among UMC parents about whether their kids will do as “well” as they did. Plus college is a culmination of a thousand parenting decisions made over years. What ECs, what academics, how hard you will push and tutor for grades. Public or private school. Which school pyramid. Parents, myself included, need to feel like they made the right choices.

If you and you kid sacrificed pieces of their childhood (and a lot of money) for a T20, you need to believe it’s worth it. If you help a kid who struggled academically or social emotionally, you need to believe they will become happy, healthy, products results at their CTCL school. If you are like me and every decision was hard and you put a lot of thought into each step, you need to believe that that non T20 but well respected good fit colleges are places where your kid will be happy and productive and accomplish their goals.

But, when you are talking about parenting choices and the future of your kids, most people’s natural response is to dig in and insist their path and their choices is the “right” one.

This is the correct answer.

I absolutely agree. It starts in the child’s infancy and continues. Private vs public; daycare vs SAHP vs nanny care; TV or no TV; early potty training vs late potty training; AP’s vs no APs; etc, etc, etc...

[Anonymous]

If everyone would just tell it like it is we’d all be good. Your kid can’t get into a top 20, cool, just own it and say she’s going to a solid state school because that’s the best she can do. Nobody is gonna have a problem with that. Just don’t sent them to a CTCL school and talk about “fit” and how they’re better than top 20 and that’s why you chose it. What you really mean by “fit” is “fit for a top 20 reject who you’re too embarrassed to send to a state school.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If everyone would just tell it like it is we’d all be good. Your kid can’t get into a top 20, cool, just own it and say she’s going to a solid state school because that’s the best she can do. Nobody is gonna have a problem with that. Just don’t sent them to a CTCL school and talk about “fit” and how they’re better than top 20 and that’s why you chose it. What you really mean by “fit” is “fit for a top 20 reject who you’re too embarrassed to send to a state school.”

A perfect example of OPs point. What a ridiculous post (and no I don't have a kid at an CTCL).