<p>It’s standard marketing: don’t insult your consumer. What did they “promise”? That he had good scores (fact) and that kids with good scores tend to fit into their college atmosphere (generalization). Believe me, as one who once worked in the advertising business, all these mailings get legal approval before going out. If they actually offerred anything specific, that would not fly. (Note: He was not (specifically) promised he’d have a great experience.) </p>
<p>What they did show is they are personalizing the mailings, at least to some degree. That makes it more appealing.</p>
<p>One of my sons was NM commended. I had told him to check the box for college information. Brochures from probably 50 schools arrived. S was overseas for his junior year so I decided which colleges were interesting and which weren’t.</p>
<p>Regarding the hope that parents will be savvy enough to temper their childrens’ optimism over aggressive marketing materials… sometimes it’s the other way around. Last year, several kiddos in my son’s senior class approached me about various “awards” and other materials they’d received unsolicited (sorry, don’t recall the names now, but they’ve been noted here as borderline scams). I told the kids as gently as I could that, while they were indeed smart students and terrific kids, these “awards” didn’t really mean much and putting them on an application would probably just make them look a little naive.</p>
<p>Their response was uniformly on the order of, “Yeah, that’s what I thought, a National Gullible Guppy Award. Would you please, pretty please, tell my folks so they won’t blow the money on this?” It was the parents, not the kids, who were gung-ho about the “great honors” their kids were receiving and insistent on adding those things to the kids’ resumes and buying the who’s-who type books that came with them.</p>
<p>Kids are more sophisticated and cynical these days than we were in my day…</p>
<p>Based on the letters recieved by our D during her quest to college addmission last year, I was able to fairly accurately categorized as follows:
Generic letter based on self reported GPA and class rank during SAT testing and SAT scores.
[Not helpfull at all]</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Department letters based on the information provided online or mailing in the materials recieved in 1.
[Indicative of a match, high match, low or high reach schools]</p></li>
<li><p>Personalized letters from department head or Professor in the field of your intentive major based on college visits and interaction with one or more members of the department.
[Fairly accurate in predicting match or high match schools]</p></li>
</ol>
<p>My son is a senior and received a very nice ‘book’ from Princeton yesterday, 70 pages of photos, information, etc. This is a very, very nice book. Along with it he received information about submitting an application and a brochure regarding financial aid.</p>
<p>We were discussing this last night. How much money does something like this cost Princeton? How extensive would the mailing list be on this?</p>
<p>Harvard’s mailing list has something like 70,000 names on it, and I doubt that Princeton’s is substantially smaller. (We received the same Princeton mailing in today’s mail. My son gets a lot of college mail by email, because he provided an email address when he signed up for the PSAT, but we still get postal mail too.) </p>
<p>Those mailings are expensive. That’s one reason why it is incorrect to say that colleges encourage applications to make money from application fees. Admission offices have expenses MUCH greater than their fee revenues. It takes a lot of expensive outreach to get each student to apply.</p>
<p>Because 16-year-olds have been looking at advertising all their lives – on TV, in publications, on the Internet – and are probably at least as sophisticated about it as we parents are.</p>
<p>advertising on TV or on the internet is not the same as receiving a letter individually addressed to the recipient, especially if they have never gotten such a letter before.</p>
<p>They may have been exposed to advertising, but they are not immune to the subliminal messages being sent either. Just watch a teen in A & F or Ruehl and see their reactions to the mood/tone of the store/</p>
<p>My Sophmore is taking a basic Econ and some advertising classes,and she was never a sucker for the advertising pull of the latest and greatest. The things she was telling me I would have figured she already knew yet she did not.</p>
<p>My son is a NMSF. We have at least 3 large cardboard boxes of this stuff and hundreds of emails - on any given day he receives 2-3 pieces of mail and an equal number of emails (which, unfortunately, come to my email account). We’ve gotten the large glossy books from HYPSM and the repeated mailings and emails from NYU, Columbia and the Univ. of Chicago, et al. - practically begging him to apply. Tons of priority application invitations. This has been going on for the last year. All of this based upon his PSAT score. The schools have no idea if he is a good student or just someone who got lucky on the PSAT.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t take this stuff too seriously. The goal of all the colleges is to get as many applications as possible in order to get their acceptance rate as low as possible, thereby, making them look more selective and increasing their ‘ranking’. The big joke among the GC is that HYPSM are vying to see who will get to a less than 1% acceptance rate first.</p>
<p>I would say the cost of sending the brochure out may not be covered by the cost of an application but may be covered by revenues realized from a boost in selectivity ratings.</p>
<p>I was wondering about priority applications, and finally found thread that discusses it. We only bit at one, because it was an overlap to all others on son’s list, but maybe just a little bit colder in climate. Does everyone here just summarily ignore them?</p>
<p>I posted, in the thread-opening post, an example of the most forward-sounding recruitment letter we have seen just from test scores. The thing about it is that I’m quite sure that at THAT COLLEGE my son could get in just by his test scores. Nothing else about his record would screen him out. He is interested in some other colleges, and is aware that at all of those colleges his chances of admission are speculative. Most college letters that arrive at our house is self-evidently mass mailings, and those are immediately trashed. We only keep some of the letters that make some effort to be customized.</p>
<p>murray, we didn’t ignore priority apps. One of my son’s safeties made it to that pile by sending him a priority app. It was free and the process was so easy – just filling out a simple form and sending scores and transcripts – his attitude and mine were, what the heck. It’s nice to have an acceptance or two in the bag in September. And our experience with priority apps was that if they waive the essays and application fees and give you a shortened application form, then they want you – they really, really want you.</p>
<p>What tokenadult mentioned in the original post was not a priority application but a plain old marketing letter, cleverly worded to flatter the student. The enthusiastic marketing letter is not necessarily a sign that the student has a strong chance of admission – at most, it’s just a sign that they’d like the student to apply.</p>
<p>Thank you, geek_mom. This is my first kid to go through this. My son and I have been debating this. He thinks all mail and e-mail is “just marketing”. You have given us a clear idea of what to look for.</p>
<p>S took the PSAT in 8th grade. Can’t remember why exactly but I think to qualify for some state award. His scores were in the range of NMSF. Anyway, after this he received information from several schools. Can’t remember them all but one was Vanderbilt which surprised me that they would be marketing to 8th graders. </p>
<p>BTW - he also received a scholarship offer from one school based on the 8th grade SAT score. He was flattered to receive the scholarship offer as an eighth grader but it wasn’t a school he would ever consider.</p>
If this implies a potential invitation for a free visit to campus in exchange for “show of interest” (which is what it sounds like to me), it is certainly more than a standard sales pitch.</p>
What’s so great about a free visit to campus? Are there colleges out there charging fees for visits now?</p>
<p>“A personal invitation to visit our campus” sounds to me like a marketer’s attempt to make an ordinary, impersonal message–“we encourage prospects to visit, and of course that includes you”–sound like a red carpet being rolled out.</p>