<p>My S, a junior, is getting deluged with letters congratulating him on his great test scores (I assume his PSAT). Letters from Columbia, UCLA, Rice, Texas A&M Honors program, to schools I have never heard of. I assume they received this info from College Board. Does College Board automatically send everyone's test scores to schools?</p>
<p>We buy the names from CB. Colleges tell CB what criteria they like (males who score between xxx and xxx, females who score between xxx and xxx, specific geographic locations, etc.). CB sends us the names, we pass them on to our mailing houses and within weeks, your children are getting more mail then you.</p>
<p>When students fill out their registration forms for the PSAT and SAT, they can opt out of getting college mailings. Few do this.</p>
<p>We're in the same boat. S did well on PSAT and we are killing trees with the vast amounts of letters he gets on a daily basis! However, he's only interested in State U, where his sister attends, so thus far we've kept only 1 piece of mail (from "his" future school).</p>
<p>On the flip side, you may receive a piece from a school that tweaks the interest of your child, and they may end up giving a GREAT scholarship/incentive for your child to attend their school. Enjoy this little journey....</p>
<p>My sophomore daughter took the PSAT in October and had one or two mailings per week. Since February 1st it's been 2-6 pieces per day, every day. It seems like once the apply by date is past they move on to the next crop of students.</p>
<p>Do places like Brown and Columbia really need to recruit so heavily? It just seems like they're trying to attract more applicants to reject.</p>
<p>It just seems like they're trying to attract more applicants to reject.</p>
<p>more applicants-same number of spaces- means acceptance % can be in single digits in some schools, making them look * very attractive* ;)</p>
<p>they like to flirt, but then play hard to get.</p>
<p>In * my day* that was a bad word.</p>
<p>Freshman son was told over winter break to recycle or save the two paper grocery bags worth of unsolicited mail he received in HS- he put them in his closet, still untouched... I suspect the executive decision will be made by me to recycle them in some future year.</p>
<p>I'm also curious to know how fussy the most selective schools are about the 11th-grade students they recruit. Actually, the word "recruit" seems a bit exaggerated/optimistic for what these schools are doing - entering kids' names into a database, generating address labels, and slapping them on some very generic documents. </p>
<p>Yesterday my youngest d received a nice letter from MIT. We both laughed out loud when she brought the mail in. She's a bright kid with a nice GPA and a decent PSAT score, but she has the proverbial snowball's chance there, and knows it. Ditto at some of the other tippy-top schools she's received mail from - Williams, Columbia, Amherst. </p>
<p>The word "recruit" connotes a personal awareness of the student and his/her desirability for a particular school, at least to me. My kid's not being recruited, but she is a target for advertising. Are they the same thing? Is McDonald's recruiting me, or just advertising?</p>
<p>What Emerald says makes sense. More apps, more people rejected. I don't think these schools need to advertise. It's certainly wasted on us if that's what they are doing.</p>
<p>Are these all NMSF level kids? My d had received NOTHING and she did quite well ( probably commended but not NMSF). Maybe she was one of the few that opted out since she's already sick of the college frenzy from sister and classmates. LOL I am a little surprised because her sister was a few points lower and got a ton of mail. She probably will not even remember if she checked that box or not if I ask her. LOL</p>
<p>Well my S is a couple of points higher than 2006 NMSF cut-off for our state.</p>
<p>Maybe they ask for lists of kids above last years cut-off? It's okay because she pretty much has limited her choices to a select few anyway and doesn't really want to think about it anymore. My recycling guys will be happy ,too, as it wasn't too long ago we threw out D1's huge stash of brochures.
D2 has received a few e-mails though and they were funny because they were from technical type colleges - she's an artsy verbal gal, not a math and science person. LOL . Her math score killed her- her verbal and written were much better!</p>
<p>the schools that targeted oldest- were often womens colleges and/or conservative. Well she's a * woman* but not conservative- there wasn't any place on SAT form to indicate you are * gay* I guess. ;)</p>
<p>However, although her final choice took the highest math and english score from two tests for admittance, bumping her up a bit, I think she probably missed the cuttoff for the deluge of paper as Reed reportedly mails out.</p>
<p>The sad thing is, not only the waste of paper, but the "personalized & handsigned" letters are taken as all but an offer of admittance by some.
One of my nieces received a great deal of mail from top schools, and her parents were convinced it meant it was likely to be admitted.
( and they expressed that viewpoint not only to their daughter- but to everyone they knew)
When she wasn't even waitlisted by any of schools that were targeting her numbers with mass mailings, it was a shock.</p>
<p>Fortunately, she had another school as backup, not one that sent mass mailings, but who happened to send an admission officer to her high school and gave a good presentation.</p>
<p>I would suggest though, that you consider donating materials to local high schools. Often they don't have updated catalogs, since they don't get info every year, and even if they do, some walk out the door.
I bet they would appreciate it.
( or even community colleges with transfer programs-* I know* they rarely get new material)</p>
<p>Good point EK - I'll have to ask around ( gc or CC) if D2 does start receiving lots.</p>
<p>I had to laugh when I read about all the letters sent from places that are close to impossible to get in. We were invited to a presentation given by a few of the "elite Ivy" schools who spent the evening wining and dining us and telling us how wonderful their schools were--and everyone was oohing and ahhing and fawning over the presenters, and I finally stood up and asked them why they were spending the time and money traveling all over the country selling their schools when they end up accepting a very, very low percentage of applicants. They looked at me with a little smile, and said that they want to receive lots and lots of applications from all over the country, and this is how they do it. I agree that it looks good for them in U.S News rankings when their percentage of acceptances remains low. I also have a friend from an Ivy that was asked to donate one dollar to the school--it also helps the rankings when there is a very high percentage of alumni donating to the school (it doesn't matter how much) so everyone was asked to give at least one dollar.</p>
<p>My daughter was a few points shy of the current NMF requirement for our state (NJ, very high cutoff) but she's a sophomore so wouldn't have qualified for NM this year anyway. She put down math/stats as a potential major and a good portion of the intro letters focus on math opportunities for women at their schools. I realize that's computer generated, no doubt the future French majors are being told about study abroad programs, but it does reflect the targeted marketing strategies in use today. I understand the Drexel's of the world sending a lot of mail to kids like my daughter, but Caltech? They turn away kids in droves, it can only strike me as snaring kids to apply in order to increase their selectivity rankings.</p>
<p>
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We were invited to a presentation given by a few of the "elite Ivy" schools who spent the evening wining and dining us and telling us how wonderful their schools were
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</p>
<p>Did they really pay for food and drink? The most I've seen so far in more general information sessions is cookies.</p>
<p>DS1 received 20% of his body weight in dead tree materials from colleges during soph year, including close to 300 emails. That amount will probably double this year.</p>
<p>My ds scored 195 on the PSAT, which isn't anywhere near the NMSF cutoff, and he's getting tons of mail.</p>
<p>Okay, my d must have opted out because it sounds like scores like hers are getting tons of mail. That's ok, it would probably only confuse her more anyway LOL. Since she's considering environmental studies this will be her first step toward contributing to her major. LOL</p>