I agree with you Vadd0. In my past SDN life, albeit a short one, I was flamed for saying that something was wrong with SDN when you had people posting things out of what seemed to be a state of stereotypical, premed delirium. Even the personal "advice" I received from the more revered posters was discouraging... but I'm not going to name names. Overall, I found SDN very unwelcoming, so I left and decided to do my own thing. I ended up getting into Hopkins on top of many other fortunes this cycle.
I must say that, as I've gone through this process, I've been amazed by how wrong much I what I read on SDN was. Truth be told, 90% of the stuff on this forum is pure speculation, myth. That's all you can expect from premeds who really are in the dark about applying to med school. All this does is promote anxiety and propagate misinformation.
To the premeds just starting out: do yourselves a favor and stay away from this site until application time. Or at least stick to the more frivolous threads, (the premed photos are fun). Ignore the oh-no-I-got-an-A-minus, a-C-will-kill-you, which-major-should-i-choose, which-extracurricular, which-class, which-tie, which-food, which-side-of-the-bed-should-i-get-up-from threads. Furthermore, forget about the MSAR statistics, GPA*MCAT=Admission equations, school "prestige" and all the other crap. When application time arrives, come back to SDN only to get logistical information such as interview travel info etc.
Until then, work hard and pursue everything that is important to you.
