<p>It is a common knowledge in S’s former HS that some top schools aggressively promote themselves to those 2400 4.6 well rounded kids they have intend to reject.</p>
<p>My son received numerous mailings, including Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth, Penn all for one reason only (I believe) is because he scored an 800 on his Math SAT I and Math Sat II. If they really looked at his total score - they would not have wasted their mailing. He only scored a 600 on the Critical Reading and that’s not getting him into any Ivy. Especially with no hooks. We didn’t bite though.</p>
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<p>And yet every year on CC you see kids from low-income / low-resource backgrounds who never ever would have considered that they could apply to Harvard (et al) if it weren’t for a mailing they receive. The gullibility of people who can’t figure out that a direct marketing database consisting of kids who score above X on standardized testing is exactly the same thing as a marketing database for BMW consisting of households who make over $X isn’t their problem. </p>
<p>Performersmom - I think good branding is <em>precisely</em> what elite colleges should do. It’s a good business practice.</p>
<p>Unless you are reading a board like this, they may get you, even if you “should” know better. I know a couple of law school professors who proudly displayed their daughter’s “recruitment letter” from Harvard on the refrigerator. She applied EA. They then had an extremely disappointed child frantically completing applications during the winter holiday. I find these mailings distasteful.</p>
<p>I think HS kids know about these schools already from the internet. But maybe I’m wrong about that.</p>
<p>Schools market themselves to populations, but they accept (and reject) individuals. There is always going to be some degree of disconnection between these two processes. It’s unfortunate that some students (and naive parents) misinterpret a mass marketing brochure and a form cover letter as a “likely letter.” But unless a school’s acceptance rate is approaching 100%, it is simply not feasible for a school to market itself only to students that it will then promise to accept. </p>
<p>For a highly-selective school it is inevitable that the majority of students in its target population are going to get rejected. That’s part of the definition of “highly selective.” I don’t know why people are surprised by this or take it as evidence for an evil plot on the part of the colleges. Could they do a better job of targeting the populations they market to? Yeah, I’m sure they could. What advertising campaign couldn’t?</p>
<p>So, how <em>should</em> a school get its name out, especially a school that has historically been known only in its local area? In addition to mailings from elite schools, my kids also got plenty of “East Whatever State U” mailings. What’s wrong with that? If I were the director of admissions at East Whatever State, why on earth wouldn’t I want to buy a list of kids with SAT/ACT over X and try to attract them to try to build my profile? I mean, goodness, look at all the effort the U of Alabama has made in recent years to pull itself up from regional-state-school to a school that is more nationally known and in the consciousness of kids in places other than the Southeast. How else should they do it? You can’t just build it, you have to make others aware of it.</p>
<p>But BMW does not have an educational mission. If Harvard=BMW=Slap Chop, I agree, anything goes.</p>
<p>I agree 100% with coureur. How the heck are they going to be able to “target” better? How are they to know ahead of time that over here is the girl who writes like a dream and over there is the guy who advocates for social change and over there is the girl who is going to win Intel the next year? Duh, they set some minimum level of SAT/ACT, maybe some other criteria and go from there. What else should they do? I think this angst is much ado about nothing. Oh, horrors, they buy mailing lists. Just like every single other business in the country. Like I said - anyone stupid enough to believe that these are things other than mailing lists gets what they deserve.</p>
<p>So what that BMW doesn’t have an educational mission? </p>
<p>Look, Kaplan or Kumon has an educational mission of sorts. If they decide to buy a mailing list of high-school students in the X metropolitan area who live within X miles of one of their facilities, is that “bad” - or is that just common sense business 101?</p>
<p>If I’m a private SAT/essay consultant, and I somehow fall upon a list of high-school students with grades of X in a high-affluent area (who have parents who can pay for my services), is there something wrong with that?</p>
<p>I think putting students’ names on the mailings is what makes them seem like likely letters… to those who have never seen an actual likely letter. ymmv</p>
<p>I don’t think we can and should try to change the behavior of the schools. </p>
<p>I don’t think we should limit the number of applications or AP or place any other artificial restrictions on students. </p>
<p>There are actually people who want to limit the number of APs a kid can take to lower the bar for everyone else who think they need to compete. </p>
<p>I think we (the consumers) can change our own behavior.</p>
<p>PG,
I think it is wrong if there are only 1500 spaces and you are soliciting millions of people.
Where is the proof that the admission results (interesting and capable and diverse students) really are enhanced by all the marketing??</p>
<p>Elite boarding schools do NOT engage in such branding and marketing. They fill their spaces and seem happy with the kids they get. Word of mouth is probably the biggest way they get marketed. And, believe me, there are plenty of mis-conceptions about BS, which they could be trying to correct in the public domain.</p>
<p>I am not convinced that the outreach is as much a way to nab a few cool kids as it is to enhance the prestige with a lower acceptance rate and a widely known (but perhaps not well understood) luxury brand. </p>
<p>Kumon is not likely to turn any down, just likely to expand with demand, so the analogy is not correct.</p>
<p>What hasn’t been explicitly spelled out in this thread, is the mailings are NOT coming from the admissions offices or even the colleges themselves! They are being sent out by ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT COMPANIES, hired by the colleges, to entice students into sending in an application. Those companies are the ones who farm the data, and try to figure out the demographic areas that they are likely to draw the most applicants from. The more applications= the more money the enrollment management companies make.
Pizzagirl is right. </p>
<p>These mailings are nothing but ADS. It would sure be nice for CC to have a notice at the top of their home page stating that fact. Because this type of thread pops up every year.</p>
<p>There is not. Kaplan, Kumon, and you, are for profit enterprises with the goal of making money, so advertizing is a natural and appropriate outflow.</p>
<p>Harvard, on the other hand, is a not for profit entity. As they have, by their own words, no shortage of acceptable candidates, why is this outreach consistent with their mission? Maybe it is, I don’t know. But it seems to me that their standard should be different than someone hawking cars or slap chops. And they used to be above selling anything to 17 year olds (did I sound old there, I think I did, I still look great, don’t get me wrong, but I think that sounded old, damn I look good, though). </p>
<p>Sorry about that, by the way, I never cook, and rarely eat for that matter, my diet consisting mostly of protein bars and booze, but I have purchased several slap chops. Who could resist the slap chop? One acceptable answer is - not me.</p>
<p>My point was not that the colleges make more money from the mailings, mpm. But maybe I am wrong?
1500 spaces, hmmm. And a marketing budget of what???
What are the returns form this spending? Are the AdComm Officers, the Pres of the college paid incentives when the rankings go up? The acceptance rates go dow, the yield goes up???
OR, when the quality of the class or number of hidden gems goes up???</p>
<p>Let’s talk business, then.</p>
<p>In a lottery, to be fair, the analogy is that the number of tickets sold is the measure of success. </p>
<p>I do wonder and not know the answers to these:
Do AdComms feel that the total of application fees is important factor to their comp? to their employment? to being promoted? I confess I am uneducated on this and do not know how this works…
P.s. Marketing is good-will branding expense for entire college: even alums/donors, prosp gard students and future profs are impressed by ranking and low acceptance rates…</p>
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<p>In addition, it comes in a big enevelop complete with application forms on ultra fancy stationary. Funny thing is not many colleges or universities go that length to make it look real. It is not just what everyone does. It’s what everyone does and more.</p>
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<p>Actually, I may be kidding myself but we may be changing their behavior. This is from last year. I have not yet heard many incidents this year. Here’s hoping that they heard our name calling.</p>
<p>PG- I get the feeling H may not be very happy to stand next to kumon or kaplan.</p>
<p>menloparkmom - That’s cute. So it’s all some commercial management office’s doing? Like a hired gun? And they didn’t know they were hiring a gun?</p>
<p>It may be hard for some to believe, but not everyone is as knowledgeable as you guys are about college admissions! There are people out there that don’t have college educated parents, and don’t have college counsellors. There are people that don’t know any Harvard graduates, and go to schools where no one has ever gone to Harvard. There are people that think that because they’re poor, they can’t afford Harvard, or that people like them can’t go to Harvard. There are people that would have never thought to apply to Harvard if Harvard didn’t tell them they might possibly be a strong candidate. </p>
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<p>In fact, they do! If you have participated in a talent search, like TIP or CTY, then you might have gotten mailings from many elite boarding schools, inviting you to apply - I know I did. Also, I’m not sure if these boarding schools are a fair comparison, because I literally had not met a single person who went to one until I went to college. At least, I know people from my area that went to schools like Harvard, etc. I get the impression that boarding schools aren’t as diverse, though I may be wrong.</p>
<p>If I did the calculation correctly (see below), Harvard receives around $1.6M in application fees annually:</p>
<p>$75 application fee * 1640 freshmen / 8.5% accepted / 90% yield</p>
<p>warbrain-
my point about elite BS is that the schools do not engage in huge huge blanket outreach so as to find those excitingly hidden gems, to inflate the numbers of apps, etc. The acceptance rates have not gotten much below 12%.
You are right- they are less diverse, but they do offer scholarships and attempt to get diversity geographically as well.
Some of the top ones do have large endowments.
And BS is culturally not a well known phenomenon.
But I was making the analogy bet say the Ivies and the HADES schools, and I see important differences in outreach and marketing.</p>
<p>The BS, like many colleges, do offer on-campus summer programs to try to attract and educate the students about who they are- I see this as appropriate, esp because they do offer many if not all spaces to underprivileged or unenlightened kids at a lot of these summer programs at both BS and colleges.</p>
<p>Furthermore, marketing to CTY and TIP IS “good” branding, btw!!! The top colleges seem much less targeted.</p>
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<p>“Same as it ever was.” Yes, the days when elite boarding schools were the province of a relatively small number of families who were all-in-the-know and got there by word-of-mouth isn’t really something to strive for. The whole POINT is that they want to reach beyond the usual people who are reached by word-of-mouth.</p>