The problem with Reddit’s Applying to College

I joined Reddit’s Applying to College when it had less than 3,000 members. I even served as the first moderator from late 2015 until the middle of 2017. I’m friends with the founder Steve Schwartz in real life. I tried my best to make it a sane, inclusive, and informative community. I brought on the first two waves of moderators, but like so many forums and online communities, once it grew to around 50,000 members, the quality of content decreased substantially.

Trolls arrived, memes took over, and the place became so unpleasant that I retired as a mod. A few other mods and active members were doxed and harassed in real life. I decided it just wasn’t worth the fight to try and decrease the stress of the admissions process. Receiving death threats for trying to moderate hundreds of posts during the April 1 Ivy Day decision releases. A small number of people are determined to ruin the fun for everyone.

It was almost impossible to retain student moderators because they understandably lost interest in college admissions a year or two after high school. Some moved on to medical or law school admissions online communities. Of the moderators I recruited in 2017, zero remain, and as of March 2021, no current moderator has held the position for over a year. Consequently, there is little continuity between admissions cycles as high school sophomores and juniors replace the cohort of graduating high school seniors.

Students aren’t incentivized to take collective action. It isn’t possible to create a union in an employment context or some sort of massive strike and refusal to participate in a deeply unhealthy and unfair system. The lack of motivation to change is similar to an 18-year-old advocating for lowering the drinking age, that issue becomes irrelevant the day they turn 21. People over 21 don’t want to reduce the drinking age to allow a bunch of teenagers to crowd their favorite spots. Frequent A2C posters and mods move onto other communities as their interests and position in life changes.

Anxious students consume “admissions decision reveal” and “how I got into my dream school” viral videos. Rather than uniting around a shared struggle to resist an unjust system, envious users drag down one another. Jealousy and resentment on college admissions forums and social media produce a crab mentality of “if I can’t have it, neither can you.” If crabs in a bucket cooperated, each one could climb on top of one another to freedom.

Developing a collective consciousness among applicants is the only viable solution for reform coming from outside of politics or universities. Instead, Redditors act like crabs at the bottom of a bucket who pull down those at the top: Every crab fights and none escapes. College admissions unintentionally divides and conquers.

In a community currently exceeding 250,000 members, trolls and insecure know-it-alls run off experienced, well-intentioned admissions professionals and high-quality posters. Teenagers are especially prone to the egocentric bias, where they rely too heavily on their perspective or have a higher opinion of themselves relative to their experiences. A2C is a tidal wave of the Dunning-Kruger Effect where Ivy League college students or other pseudo-authorities overestimate their abilities and knowledge. Content quality is a race to the bottom. It only takes one malicious post to cancel out the feel-goods from ten positive comments.

I see that Reddit’s A2C provides a release for many anxious students. I used to think memes were childish and didn’t have a place in thoughtful discussion, but now I view it as a form of resistance and mockery against the system. I suppose my regret is Steve and I saw so much potential in A2C’s early days to make it a viable alternative to the cesspool of College Confidential. It pains me to see what A2C has become.

High-quality or even mediocre posts become the exceptions rather than the rule, not unlike our broader political discourses on social media and YouTube comments. The larger an online community, the more likely it is to fail, absent heavy moderation and an overwhelming majority of members participating in good faith. Condescension from anonymous teenagers who would never talk to their teachers or me as such in-person persuades me that online communities can’t curb the madness.

Students embrace the current state of affairs and disparage alternatives at the expense of their individual and collective self-interest. It seems to me like a collective form of Stockholm Syndrome or learned helplessness where the prisoners justify the system that oppresses them. Rather than sources of high-quality information or mobilization against an unjust higher education system, online college admissions communities become a torrent of doubts, anxieties, and insecurities.

Redditors, you’re your own worst enemies.