(The following is a guest post by JJ Shaw, an incoming freshman at Columbia College, and pretty much sums up why you should never visit the “chance me” forums at College Confidential.)
College Confidential is “the world’s largest college forum.” Except in this world, 2400s aren’t merely enough.
It has a long history of feeding the egocentric tendencies of high achieving seniors. It inflates the self-worth of some, all while crushing the confidence of otherwise perfectly capable college-bound students.
Should you start your undergraduate education at a community college to save money? As usual, there is rarely a simply yes or no answer. So many factors for college success vary from institution to institution and so much depends on the individual that any answer is going to have to be qualified.
Believe it or not, spending time on Facebook can be a good thing for parents involved in the college search and admission process. In fact, Facebook can be an efficient way of collecting information from a variety of sources to help figure out what you need to know about finding and paying for college. And I’m not talking about simply following colleges that might eventually make the final college list. 
What does it mean if a college or university has a relatively high percentage of international students? Does it indicate better tuition deals for foreign students either in terms of financial aid or lower out-of-state tuition? Or does it mean that the school is better at recruiting international students for full pay students?
When creating a list of colleges to apply to, smart families make sure the list includes several “financial safeties.” These are colleges that the students are likely to be admitted and the family is certain to afford. However, given the need to apply for financial aid, it’s increasingly difficult to identify financial safeties. After all, you don’t really know how much you’re going to pay until you get your award. 
If you have ever taken a look at my explanation of 
