<p>Hello all, here's the situation. I took the PSATs back in December, and those "Check out our college, it's the best!" letters/emails have been rolling in nonstop. Mostly, these have been from less that prestigious institutions, but something curious happened the other day. In my mailbox, between University of Miami and the University of Central Florida was a letter from the University of Chicago. Needless to say, this came as somewhat of a shock. I'm terribly interested in going to U of C, and have sent out a response requesting for the hokey "Postcard Series" thing, on my mom's advice. </p>
<p>However, I'm quite curious as to what these letters actually mean. Is the college saying, "If you were to apply right now we might accept you"? Or, "your PSAT scores were really good and although we haven't seen your grades we want to be able to factor you into our statistics in three years"? Or perhaps something else?</p>
<p>Basically, they put you on their mailing list and send you stuff about their school. This has nothing to do with your chances of being accepted into a school.</p>
<p>
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"If you were to apply right now we might accept you"
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No. They pay 4 cents to get you on a mailing list and receive about $60 if you apply. It's all business.
[quote]
"your PSAT scores were really good and although we haven't seen your grades we want to be able to factor you into our statistics in three years"
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Not really. I've heard of people who got very low scores (eg 160) getting mail from Brown.</p>
<p>I would read and respond to the mails though. They show that you at least have some interest in them. Besides, aside from the propaganda, they can actually lead you to some good colleges you might have not considered. I'd never heard of the University of Chicago before their mail and now I'm accepted and very willing to attend if their final financial aid offer is competitive.</p>
<p>It depends. Colleges pay for lists of students with scores above certain "cut-offs." Different schools have different philosophies about this. Some will send out mail to students with scores near cut-offs that re actually much lower than the school's admissions averages because they want to increase applications and so decrease acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Other schools are more selective and figure they'd rather not waste paper and adcoms' time by raising the hopes of students they'd never accept.</p>
<p>It all depends on the school's philosophy, so you can't really tell anything from who's sending you mail.</p>