My daughter started receiving them in 9th grade from Richmond. We toured with her older brother and she came along on the trip. While in the waiting room for his interview, the receptionist asked her about her interests (musical theater) and they started sending her junk mail highlighting their theater department. Actually impressive but what a waste of money. I’m sure she will get many more from them along the way. Would love to know the marketing budgets of these schools. Seems to me they could drastically lower that and reduce tuition.
My son has gotten a ton of stuff from Vandy as well, including packets on their generous financial aid. As others have said, its all a scam designed to drive up applications and rejections, and thereby game the rankings. I will say In Vandy’s defense, there are plenty of other schools that play this same game. My son has also gotten a ton of stuff from the University of Chicago (to name one).
During my DD’s junior and senior years, we lived abroad in Germany. She got so many mailings/etc from WPI. Wow! They must really like her as a female math major! I said why not apply to see what happens SHe got in , but only got a 15K scholarship (still making it the most expensive net of the colleges she got into)…No thanks, why did you bother?
Yup, mostly just junk mail to drive up apps. I wouldn’t read anything into one receiving it and one not.
Was surprised to see the amount of mail that comes from the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins. Would love to know how much they spend on those. Haven’t gotten anything from Vandy though.
We received one nice brochure from Vandy my daughter’s sophomore year.
We had heard of it but didn’t even know what state (or region ) it is in.
We checked it out and found out about the great FA available for middle class families.
So she applied and ended up choosing to attend over other top 20 schools…and it was the most affordable.
So, for us it worked. She just graduated and was very happy there.
D17 received a lot of mailing from military academies, and she was thinking about NA for a bit, but she didn’t apply.
Yes, agree with @kelsmom. Vandy is not the old Vandy any more. D17 has a group of friends with way more diversity than the primarily white PA public HS she graduated from.
DS20 visited because we visited D together. He has been getting mail from them now!
D has our Citi credit card, but recently a bank where she has her account invited her to apply for a credit card. And she never heard back after applying. She had to call and for them to say “sorry, you were rejected”. Why would the bank invite you to apply and then reject you? I can understand college for ranking, why for credit cards??
University of Chicago was the worst offender in our house, but I began to see the brilliance in their over-marketing strategy when I began to wish I could apply there myself, at age 50. Maybe this is what they hope will happen with the kids. It’s true that repeated exposure makes you more likely to remember a product. But yeah, none of these schools can legitimately call itself “green.”
Chicago is definitely the worst offender when it comes to the junk mailings. The son got tons of mail from them and still gets them, even for their summer program. Although it’s nothing compared to Baylor. He got email and snail mail from Baylor even as a college freshman.
Columbia was another serious offender with junk mail asking him to apply. He was smart enough not to fall for the spiel.