The U of Mass has decided I’m an alum, at least for the purposes of solicitation on the Day of Giving or the Annual Fundraiser Day, or really on any given Tuesday. I don’t know why as I never attended or even applied.
I considered the $750 National Merit award that my son received from UChicago to be cringeworthy. He attended anyway (20 years ago), but WHY did they bother? It was almost insulting.
Where else in his life can a high school student make $750 with 4 hours work?
I kept him out of the sports betting markets. He could have lost it in a lot less time than that. But he could also have made a lot of money at online poker (which he did in later years – after college). (He was offered much larger merit awards at other colleges, but chose this one in part b/c it was located in a major league city – as in major league sports.)
Re errors: I tried (but clearly was not successful, as I still recall it vividly a year later) to ignore the poor grammar in an email from one admissions rep–“you’re” instead of “your,” random capitalized words, and at least two comma splices. It looked like a tweet that he didn’t bother to proofread. The rep was probably around age 35 (so not a kid) PLUS he was a graduate of the 4,000 student private school he represented! The sentiment was upbeat and welcoming, so I tried to focus on that.
Much more impressive were the impeccable emails from the regional admissions rep at a large OOS public. A more senior person, at least based on his website photo, he probably had his replies down to a science – but they didn’t seem canned.
I never mentioned either reaction to S. Heeding the advice that a student will likely never deal with Admissions again once he enrolls, I didn’t want their performance to affect the decision phase. Doesn’t mean it didn’t bother me…
This goes back several years, but DS got a letter from the University of Texas - Austin informing him that because he was NMS he would qualify for an automatic $44000 per semester scholarship. A week later, he got a letter apologizing for the typo and clarifying the scholarship for out-of-state NMS scholars was $4000 per semester.
Since he had already been accepted at several great schools with fantastic financial aid, he toyed with the idea of sending them a snarky letter back, but he was too busy with his ECs and AP’s to bother harassing them about their mistake.
Some of us are not in the business world and do not know, or care. about how things are to be done in that fashion. Turned off by things business- such as their dress code…
@rickle1 Typos on marketing materials from colleges is frustrating to say the least. Especially as it seems like the colleges expect perfection from their applicants. Just for fun, I am going to point out that you have a typo in your comment. Can you find it? 
^ The point is, around here, we prefer to start sentences with a capital letter. :))
ETA: @ylimekcaj refers to post #22. Sorry, I know it was rickle1’s task, but . . .
I worked for a corporation and for many years we had one guy in marketing doing an in-house magazine and a few ads, posters, etc. We in legal had to approve this, but it was never a big deal.
Then we got a Communications Dept. These people could not produce a letter without mistakes. We suddenly had to approve every piece of marketing, scripts for marketing programs that were going to be filmed for training, letters to customers, statements about internal awards or contests. Another guy and I did all this in addition to our ‘regular’ work. We asked them if they wanted us to correct grammar too. “Oh wow, you guys really know how this works. Were you journalism majors?” No, we weren’t.
We are way, way too happy to care, and the college can make many more such mistakes and still be perfect in our eyes right now… but my son and all his future classmates accepted to the class of 2022 just received letters in the mail welcoming them to the class of 2021. Oops.
Many years ago, my D, with sky-high SATs, perfect GPA, etc, was accepted to the Honors Programs by several highly ranked universities. Our own state U, however, accepted her but turned her down for Honors. We were really surprised–don’t want to seem arrogant, but her stats put her far above the school’s 75th percentile, and the school was not nearly as selective as the others. So I called–they said there’d been an error, they’d reversed the mailings of who were and were not accepted–would they like us to reconsider her?
Nope–that pretty much sealed her not wanting to go there.
Here is an error in communications…my D and I were planning to visit a school well known for music. D is a cellist. We were encouraged by another student to inquire if D could have a cello lesson while on the visit. It’s pretty common to do this. I called admissions to set up the visit. I had the scheduler call the music department while I was on the phone to confirm procedure. I was instructed to fill out the online form and detail request for lesson, tour and info session. I’m pretty meticulous about this stuff and followed instructions to a “t”. We were told that all would be set up. When traveling by plane with a cello you have to buy a seat for the actual instrument. I set out to do this when D’s music teacher said there was a student there willing to loan personal cello for lesson. Woohoo. A week before trip I hadn’t seen any information come by e-mail so I called. This time I was told it was our responsibility to set this up with the instructor. They acknowledged error and were apologetic and transferred me to music department. Person there said no worries and they would get it done and call back…two days go by I leave message 2 more days leave another. No calls. Arrive in city of school call from hotel. leave another message. Finally get a call back. No lesson. Really glad I hadn’t gotten ticket for cello. d was incredibly disappointed and set the tone for the visit.
It’s not a typo, but I would still consider poor choice of words to be an embarrassing mistake. Two days ago, my son received a mailer from an elite private university in the south that described itself as the “dream school.” I make an effort to discourage my kids from designating a dream school, especially those that are high-ranking with sub 20% admissions rates. It’s not prudent to pin your hopes and dreams on the whims of an application reader. Toying with young people’s emotions with used-car salesman hyperbole is the lowest form of college marketing. This school was never on my son’s list. It will remain off the list.
Here’s one that just happened - some TCU hopefuls checking their portal thought they had been accepted only to find out later that they were deferred. The portal had a cryptic message like “We hope you will accept our offer” that later changed to “…offer of deferred admission.”
Maybe the entire class is so gifted it will only take them three years to graduate?
I cleaning out my inbox and came upon an email from St. Mary’s College of Maryland. We visited last summer and I wrote them a thank you note for the extra effort their guide put in to our tour.
The note back from them said, “We are thrilled to hear that you and your family had a great tour. We will be sure to pass on the kuddos to (guide name)!”
I had a fun time envisioning what kind of animal a kuddo might be.
@ninakatarina Whatever a kuddo is, I bet it’s kuddoly.