<p>Yesterday I got an admissions booklet from a well-regarded school in my area. The thing is, I'm only a rising freshman in high school. Neither of my parents went to that school, so it wasn't an alumni mailing. Is it because of standardized test scores or was it a mistake?</p>
<p>It’s not an offer. It’s just a booklet telling you about the school. I got things in the mail from Penn, Dartmouth, and Harvard, but could I have ever gotten into those schools? No way. You’re thinking way too much about it. It’s just a booklet and nothing more.</p>
<p>Just take it as any other advertisement you receive in the mail. As a regular students, you generally don’t begin garnering attention until after your ACT/SAT/PSAT exams. For athletes, schools are not even allowed to begin recruiting until much later on.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s because of your standardized test scores. (Assuming, of course, that you took a standardized test.) When you registered, you probably checked the box that allowed the testing service to distribute your name to colleges that might be interested in you. </p>
<p>And Anna and tiger are right: it’s not an offer, just an advertisement. Harvard, for example, mails out tens of thousands of mailings every year, but it admits only a couple thousand students.</p>
<p>Be prepared for an avalanche of these mailings. I was talking to a mom of an athlete and she kept saying that her child was “being recruited” by certain schools. It turned out that she was talking about these same mailings…which were also being sent to my non-athletic child. It just means that you took the test and agreed to release your personal information for the College Board to sell.</p>
<p>Getting college mail from a school does not mean they want you. If you get mail from Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc. that does not mean they are reaching out to you personally. They are just sending out mail.</p>