I’ve had my own College Confidential account going on five years now, though I might be considered more of a lurker than an active poster. I got one during the summer following my junior year in preparation for the college admissions season, just to get a sense of the schools I might possibly be admitted into. My idea was to attend the best school possible, but many of my friends hadn’t fallen to the same aspiration. The College Confidential community, well-known for embracing applicants to the elite schools, as news website examiner.com bears witness to, provided a place where I could put my mind to rest; there were others out there!
My brother and I at my dream school circa 2008, just a few miles up the road from us here. Source: my own photo library!
After being admitted to Santa Clara and a few other schools, my decision had pretty much made itself, on account of finances. I met a few other incoming freshmen and sophomores on the SCU-specific forum (there’s one for each American school), and so we talked about our motivations and plans for the four years we’d be spending at school. Ironically, even at this point, none of the students cared to share their real-life identities with each other — only geographic and academic information. On the forums, avatars are avatars, I suppose.
After matriculating, I served as one of the freshman bloggers for the class of 2013. In the Marketing Office, after orientation, I’d mentioned to one of the senior staff that College Confidential played a big role in my application process. She asked whether I’d paid attention to the SCU-specific forum, or just the general ones, to which I answered “both”. Subsequently, she mentioned Santa Clara was interested in generating a normative presence on the specific board. I told her that would be a fantastically bad idea — College Confidential represents a democratization of information about schools. If a school is known for stinginess when it comes to financial aid, or poor student-institution communication, it ought to be stated that way. Everyone knows libelers exist, and their efforts aren’t transparent to forum members. College Confidential culture ought to exist outside the confines of school publications, though — otherwise it might just be the equivalent of a digital information session provided by interested parties.