<p>Do acceptance letters come in the regular mail or by fedex/ups?</p>
<p>regular mail for most schools.</p>
<p>With exceptions, generally snailmail inside US, FedEx or other private carrier for overseas. Some colleges will send emails, some will even do text messages. Several will post results online at a certain date/time. Check this year's admissions threads for the individual colleges in which you are interested to find out how/when notifications are sent.</p>
<p>Looks like it is moving toward electronic notification (i.e., you logon at an appointed time).</p>
<p>But generally, they also send out a snail mail later. Like Ivies. This year, you could access the results online (a Monday, April 1st I believe), but you also got the full information a week or two later in the mail.</p>
<p>While we're on the subject of acceptance letters, I was wondering whether it would be okay to throw them away. I mean, I think it's great that I got into the schools I got into, but I don't like keeping papers I don't have to keep. Since I'll be headed to Swarthmore in the fall, do I really need the acceptance letters and financial aid award letters from places like Grinnell or Reed?</p>
<p>You're free to throw them away (or better yet, burn them) if you're sure you won't regret it later. Just, if you throw away the letter for your school of choice, be sure you're not loosing any important info (like how much money you're receiving).</p>
<p>my mom saved my acceptances in a scrapbook and gave it to my grandpa for father's day :) but yeah, i don't see what why you couldn't throw them away but i would keep them as reminders of how your hardwork paid off.</p>
<p>colleges get messy with these sorts of things. you may find out before you, uh, find out. i have two friends that got an email inviting them to accepted students' day at william and mary several days before they got their letters. i received a communication from the college that i will attend this fall that was sent to my personal email and copied ("cc:") to an email address corresponding to my name at the college's domain. watch out for these little slip ups if you're really chomping at the bit to find out.</p>
<p>but, to answer your question, colleges either mail your packets via usps, send you an email with your decision (only one college informed me in this manner), or have you sign in to an online account (the ivies do this). even those who correspond electronically, however, follow up with a printed letter. </p>
<p>then, there is the "likely letter". i know that uva does this. i don't know who else does. these letters are sent out a month or two before official decision are to the very top applicants, basically letting them know that their chances at securing admission are around 98 percent. these are sent to applicants that the school is afraid of losing to more competitive schools - for example, in uva's case, they send these letters out to applicants who they think might be competitive at ivies or LAC's such as AWS. </p>
<p>(that last part was quite a tangent - sorry!)</p>
<p>I will show them to my kids LOL</p>