First, I think it's awesome that someone put this together to try to help kids get into better colleges. That's great, and it most likely took a lot of time, and it seems like a project done entirely out of good will. That's awesome. That said, I had a really strong negative reaction after reading the introduction. I'm a college freshman, although since I spent some time working after highschool it's been about 2 years since I applied to colleges. I was aware of College Confidential but it seemed like a shitty site full of people pretending that they knew more than me about the college process. Lots of comments like "no way you could get in there with those scores." As far as I can tell, here's all you need to do to improve your SAT: take lots of practice tests. And I'm not even sure that's the best way to improve your chances of getting into a selective school. If you ask colleges how to improve your chances of getting in, they'll tell you to become more interesting and well-rounded. I don't buy the theory that colleges lie about this out of some ulterior motive – I just don't see the incentive. I ended up getting extremely lucky and got into a great school, but the only thing I can think of that would have made me "stand out" in an applications process is being relatively good at programming.<p>Beyond a certain point of classes / SAT scores, you're going to be much better served doing something productive and interesting with your time than endlessly taking practice tests and posting on a forum full of people who don't know what they're doing. The only people who really know whether or not you're going to get into a college are its admission officers.
nice site, but a lot of the information is very vague:<p>[Essays]
> Read a lot of college essay books. See what’s cliche and what’s not. Absolutely avoid cliche topics.<p>Such as.....?<p>[Recommendations]
> These can be crucial, but usually aren’t.<p>So they are but they aren't...give an example of when they are, and when they aren't.<p>However, you do have some good information that you don't emphasize enough:<p>[Extracurriculars]
> The truth is that most people, high school, college, or otherwise, are not really passionate about anything. The goal of your extracurriculars should be to explore things that you may be interested in. The more unique your ECs are, the better. Don't do math club just because you saw someone online doing it.<p>[Overview]
> Being the smartest in your high school doesn’t guarantee you anything.<p>Also if you're going to use references, e.g. in Essays: "Some good books are [1,2,3]", make [1,2,3] links to said sources.
Hey all,<p>I recently finished this website. It aggregates a lot of material from College Confidential and other sources and just tries to present it in a nice manner. The goal is to explain how top college admission works and most of the rest is on SAT preparation.<p>I used Pelican + Sphinx for all of it. Would love to get your feedback.
Interesting site. You know the SAT will be redesigned in a year? I tutor the SAT occasionally, and thought about making a site, but the pending change put me off developing anything major.