<p>It has been a few years since my son went through the application process and it is now very different than it was just a few years back so I have a question regarding the acceptance/rejection notifications. Are the days of waiting at the window for the mail to arrive so you can run out to check for the "fat envelope" or the "skinny envelope" over? Has it been completely replaced with e-mail notification? Just wondering if any colleges still provide their notification through the mail. Getting an e-mail notification is more efficient but it seems a little too sterile to me. I guess I am old fashioned.</p>
<p>The only college my older son applied to that didn’t also send email was Caltech. It was awful - they sent acceptances out priority mail and rejections regular mail. It took six days for the rejection to get to the east coast. We could tell from CC what was going on so it wasn’t a surprise, but we’d much rather have heard sooner. Some school try to time it so the letters are mailed a day or two before the e-mail blast.</p>
<p>^ mathmom, so are you saying that colleges will send both an e-mail and letter? Thanks for your feedback.</p>
<p>DD just got her 1st acceptance and it was in a regular thin letter. On the admission website, it still hasn’t indicated that she’s admitted and there was no email. Of course, this is a state school and a very early admission in the cycle, so I don’t know if I’d read too much into this.</p>
<p>Many schools have online notification. And the worst ones are where you have to sign in at xx:xx time on XX/XX date and check a portal. So everyone is on at the same time. And there are delays, and crashes. </p>
<p>Some still use the mail, and thin can be acceptance with the thick one to follow later.<br>
Some use email, and you have to watch out for filters and spam folders.</p>
<p>It will be a variety of notifications.</p>
<p>They all sent letters as well emails or a login website to check. He didn’t apply to any state schools. The acceptances (for my son) sent big fat envelopes with info about accepted students weekends, the waitlists sent letters with postcards to send back if you want to remain on the waitlist and the rejections sent nice letters saying they had too many great candidates. I know some colleges send thin acceptance letters and followup with the hoopla, I think that may be more common with the EA/ED acceptances. In fact now that I think of it RPI sent a thin acceptance letter saying they were going to be giving him a merit award, but they’d let us know how much later.</p>
<p>D and S1’s school still sends <em>only</em> snail mail notices to US citizens living at home. They do email notification for internationals.</p>
<p>They also do thin acceptances for ED, with fat packets that follow when RD acceptances go out.</p>
<p>All the colleges I applied to except one still sent out paper acceptance and rejection letters with no online decision. HOWEVER, one school tricked me and sent me an application for the NEXT semester with my rejection letter. So I got a huge envelope and thought I’d been accepted, when in fact it was just one fat rejection letter.</p>
<p>Most (but not all)schools now send email notifications if the student chooses to receive them. Most still follow up with hard copies, especially acceptances. Seems like there was one school (Stanford?) that would not follow up with a hard copy of a rejection letter.</p>
<p>It’s no easier to wait at a computer than it was to wait at the mailbox.</p>
<p>S2 applied to two state schools in Fall 2007. Both only sent the fat envelope acceptance letters. One sent a school license plate in the fat envelope.</p>
<p>The only school I applied to sent an email, and a couple of days later a rather skinny accecptance letter.</p>
<p>Two years ago, Williams only did paper, not email, and an acceptance came in a skinny envelope. Very difficult (actually, impossible) to read through, too.</p>
<p>My kids encountered the online notification system and the e-mail version. In their experience, fat envelopes and thin envelopes are as obsolete as landlines and typewriters.</p>
<p>Both schools I applied to and got acceptances from this summer were by mail. One was a thin envelope, the other relatively thick. I didn’t get email notification from either for a few weeks, and those emails were just for the “Hey, pay your enrollment deposit here” stuff. One was a state school, the other a private.</p>
<p>My S attends a small LAC that is about an hour from the city where we live. Believe it or not, one of the admissions counselors drove here and hand delivered his acceptance letter to him at his high school.</p>
<p>The others were email with the small letter arriving on the same day or through a website.</p>
<p>Most of my son’s schools had a password required site where you could learn your fate.</p>
<p>My d applied to 8 schools. Five of them were snail mail notification only. They could check their application status on line (whether everything was in), but the results of the application decision were still by snail mail.</p>
<p>But the fat/thin envelope dichotomy is pretty much dead. Several of d’s acceptances were in small envelopes, just with the acceptance decision & FA offer. To save on copying, paper & mailing costs, the schools didn’t send out all the forms until they got the students’ acceptance notifications. That’s particularly true of schools with smaller yields.</p>
<p>D applied to 9 schools, only a few sent sent e-mails, all D could log onto admissions website for decisions. D had a log on date of “around” a particular date on 6 schools, 3 had a specified date. All followed with acceptance letter, some thick some thin.</p>
<p>Most of D2’s notifications were available on a website or arrived via snail mail. All website notifications were followed up with snail mail. D2 also got a phone call from an admissions officer (who called at about 9:30 pm) to congratulate her on her acceptance. That LAC also had final decisions on the web, but the call came before the time one could check on the web. D1–who is 6 years older–received all her notifications via snail mail same with my stepS and stepD.</p>
<p>My D applied to several out of state schools and one in state school (state university school). The in-state school used email notices, that the kids by-passed by checking their account, apparently if they got in, their account was debited for the deposit, which they found out before the official email was sent. All the OOS schools only used snail mail, which was very frustrating, because the acceptances were sent out in batches and it took a good three days longer for D to hear than some of the kids who lived closer. It did make for some good drama when the (large manila) envelopes finally arrived, though.</p>