College mails

Hi, I’m a 10th grader in the IB program and some of my friends are getting college mails from for example like San Diego Unviversity & I was wondering what they do to get letters from University’s this early ?

Usually this is because of taking a test such as the PSAT, SAT or ACT. They have your information and they send it to colleges.

Not sure how it works today, but on the PSAT there was a box that you check/uncheck that indicates if you want mailings from colleges.

It is just marketing.

Either they took the psat or sat or the college bought a list of students from ur school so they could send mail, don’t worry the mail that u get from colleges are not going to be the colleges u apply to, they r stupid colleges that nobody has ever heard of

^not true. Top 20 schools send mail, so does your local CC.

And just because you haven’t heard of it yet, it doesn’t mean its a bad school. I never even heard of Rice before I came on this forum.

For us the mailings started showing up just after each daughter took the PSAT, and gradually faded out during senior year. At its peak we were probably getting two to four ads in the mail every day. Someone in your family can look forward to putting out a recycle bin every couple of weeks with lots of mailings in it.

We got ads from top schools (Harvard and Stanford) and from schools that we have never heard of and from a wide range in between.

My daughter who is now a senior started getting college imail in 9th grade and didn’t take a standardized test until 10th grade when she took the PSAT at school. We think a research survey she was involved with in 8th grade may have gotten her on the list. Of course this year as a senior she has had days with tons of college mail (regular mail) but it is starting to fizzle down. As to the colleges she has gotten mail from ivy league, top 20, as well as local schools and plenty of state/private schools that aren’t local and we aren’t familiar with and some obviously for profit schools. I won’t miss it though my youngest is now in 8th grade.

Hate to say it, but you might get excited at first, especially when you learn about colleges you never heard of (Bryant University, etc.), but once you’re a junior, you really wonder why they couldn’t just use emails, considering how much of a waste of paper it is.