The community at College Confidential is physically and geographically heterogeneous, but in general, there are three generic user categories worth noting. The first of these consists of college students — people enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program at an institution of higher education in the United States. Based on my experience, this group is likely the most populous, and College Confidential primarily makes a home for them in three forums — ‘College Life’, ‘Internships, Careers, and Employment’, and ‘Graduate School’. Though it may seem unsurprising that the College Confidential community would be dominated by college students, an interesting paradox arises when one considers that most of the site resources are not dedicated to college students. In fact, the knowledge provided by the group of college students is the most valuable resource offered by the site, entirely to the benefit of the other two groups. They generate much of the useful content, including videos and forum posts; they field college-related questions to which an answer is not apparent; and most importantly, they are the high water mark of social stratification on the site, a position motivated by a well-developed ability to chance college applicants.
Maybe this gal is a CC user? Source: healthyeatingandexercising.wordpress.com
The second group, the college applicants, is the target of most of College Confidential’s resources and efforts. Mostly high school students, this group migrates to the site looking for advice on applications, information about particular schools, and most importantly, chances, as is highlighted by Washington Square News. A hallmark of the community, chancing is a practice by which the merit of an applicant is assessed by the college students and other applicants. Because chancing is simultaneously popular and bloody, College Confidential has built a “coliseum” for the activity, the revealingly titled ‘What Are My Chances?’ forum, in which college applicants are measured up to the various CC rankings — reach, match, and safety — of their choice schools according to wisdom of the community.
Finally, the third group — the parents and university admissions committee members (adcoms) — are somewhat estranged from the rest of the community. While adcoms represent a valuable source of information, and also enjoy prestige and respect, they represent the antithesis of College Confidential activity in some sense — they are “butting in” on the confidential side of the community. Many adcoms are there to represent the university for which they work, and provide little in the way of new information. Parents often join to supervise their children’s profiles, or inquire about financial aid. There is a ‘Parent Forum’, whose primary purpose is empty-nest gushing; but like adcoms, parents are estranged because they are generally not regarded as ‘in the loop’.