You see this a lot on LSA: a random Reddit account that makes some point with way too much confidence. LSA is full of randos who have read so many blog posts and gazed at LSD for so many hours, they imagine that they themselves are practically Admissions Officers.
I’m just so tired of trying to get some balanced opinion or advice and having to deal with some reddit throwaway that thinks the random opinions they’ve rationalized are the real and true thoughts of an HYS AO.
I also have an inkling that some of the people on the subreddit who will say ‘I’m an AO’ are not, in fact, AOs.
At least here I can get some good advice from Jacob.
TL;DR stay of the subreddit
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I dislike the subreddit becuase the vibe is negative and doom-y. Too many people want to bring you down, too many people want to act like there's only one way of doing things.
@JacobBaska But for real, what I've always told folks is that the sub-reddit can be good if you treat it like scanning through the NYT or WashPo's homepage for the headlines. Are schools releasing decisions? Did someone notice something on a school's app that's new? That's all great and valuable. But once you start getting into the chance me's and whatnot, things can go sideways.
@JacobBaska Yes, exactly. I always use it as more of a map, but the map is not the territory, so to speak. I just have to shake my head when anonymous redditors start acting like they know what's going on in an Admissions Office.
Heck, there are a good amount of times when admissions officers don't know what's going on in the admissions office. One example - the year when my dean told me that we were going to start accepting the GRE for admissions ... which was totally fine and the dean's prerogative ... except it was already late-September and our app had been open for a month ... so I had to change the app on the fly AND loop back to everyone who had already applied to ask them follow up questions about the GRE ... and the dean's directions were just "figure it out." #preciousmemories