I know that when colleges send emails, it us strictly based on sat scores on the names they get from the college board. But if a really selective school like Harvard sends you a large package with brochures about a department like the humanities department, what is that supposed to mean?
All it is is advertising and trying to get you interested in applying. The more students they can get to apply, the more they can reject and show they have such a low acceptance rate…
It means that the college is putting a lot of money into marketing. Other than that, read absolutely nothing into it, because the college is not targeting you specifically.
You wouldn’t believe how many large packages I got from schools like Cornell, Harvard, UChicago, Stanford, ect… Like what the other posters say, it doesn’t mean anything except they spent a ton of money on advertising. I applied to almost all of them (except for Stanford) and I didn’t get into a single one (although UChicago did WL me). But if one of those prestigious schools are your dream schools, I would just apply to them anyways, because you really have nothing to lose besides the application fee.
It doesn’t mean anything as far as your chances. If you indicated your intended major on a test at some point, you’ll probably receive things related to it.
Here is what it means…
Harvard - $75 (app fee) x 34,285 applicants
Yale - $80 x 28,974 applicants
Princeton - $65 x 26,664 applicants
Brown - $75 x 28,742 applicants
Cornell - $80 x 37,812 applicants
Columbia - $85 x 31,818 applicants
Dartmouth - $80 x 23,110 applicants
Penn - $75 x 31,216 applicants
You do the math.
You only get a 5% acceptance rate if you can get the other 95% to apply.
So for many people they get something from Harvard and say “ooh…they must be interested in me” and apply.
If you like Harvard and have top stats…apply. If you are not interested and have very good but not crazy stats…apply elsewhere.