<p>I'm a junior, and ever since taking the PLAN last year I've been receiving mail from colleges. I've gotten things from (among others) MIT, UPenn, Columbia, WUSTL, Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt, Rochester, UChicago, etc. Several say I "have several qualities that may make me competitive for admission" (usually the most prestigious schools do). I'm wondering: what are these qualities they know of? What's the basis for their choosing to send me mail? I've taken the PLAN, PSAT, and ACT. Thanks!</p>
<p>Nothing. I don’t think any even know your scores (except for maybe PSAT). It’s a carbon copy letter they send to everyone to up their number of applicants so they can lower their acceptance rates. </p>
<p>But my letter from Brown is on my wall and it just makes me happy to look at it even though it’s just a “Insert recipient’s name here”, generic letter lol.</p>
<p>They buy the lists of people who scored in certain ranges (plus some buy the lists for certain states, regions, races, genders, religions, or majors). Everyone on the list they want gets the mail.</p>
<p>It means you satisfied some basic requirement they had set to get on the list, and they want you to apply. It doesn’t mean that you will get accepted, but it means they think you’ve got a shot.</p>
<p>^My friend got like a 60 on his PSAT and got letters from HYSPM…</p>
<p>So your friend got the lowest score possible in each section? Actually, I qualified for National Merit and only got things from Harvard and Stanford, none from Yale, Princeton, or MIT. So maybe those were off of something else.</p>
<p>Anyway, I didn’t say what lists of scores they bought, just that they bought lists based off of scores (and sometimes other factors).</p>
<p>^He answered like 4 questions on each section and went to sleep. He’s incredibly lazy when it comes to school work. And I can’t think of any other scores they could buy (maybe FCAT scores for people in Fl) since I’m one of the few people in my year who’s taken the SAT yet (almost everyone is waiting to finish SAT Prep class) and everyone has been getting college mail out the ying-yang.</p>
<p>My MIT & Chicago letters make me happy</p>