I recently received an email from a school saying “I am so pleased to extend this personal invitation for you to apply to —” Do admissions offices email students they want to apply to their school? Or is it something they send to everyone so that they can get more people to apply? If I applied would I be pretty safe to get in? I have received emails similar to this from other schools I have been considering applying to as well.
Marketing. Don’t read anything into it.
Very common.
“Personalized” by putting your student’s name on it.
They don’t send it to “everyone” - they probably filter a mailing list by characteristics they’re looking for. But it likely goes to thousands/tens of thousands of students, depending on the school.
As @RichInPitt says, most of these emails are just cut and pasted from a form letter with your name auto-generated by Slate (or whatever other application portal system utilized by the college) based on a set of criteria (minimum SAT/PSAT score for example, if you opted into the CollegeBoard’s students search service.) The only personalized admissions emails I got were those that were DIRECTLY sent from a specific admission counselor’s email address, rather than from the general admissions email.
Even your electronic admissions letters (physical copies might have hand-written words) are likely to be auto-generated by Slate, as many of my letters were once I compared them to others.
Hope this helps! Good luck with admissions!
I was excited when my son got letters from Harvard, Yale and Princeton inviting him to apply but my son said they were just trying to increase the number of applicants and he was right. All those admission fees add up to a couple million dollars for the colleges. Some schools like Tulane and Oregon said he was a “preferred” applicant and was likely to get a scholarship. Those kinds of offers might be worth applying to, especially if they waive the application fee. He got a letter from a fencing coach at NYU inviting him to apply, but saying not to apply if he needed financial aid. He did not apply.
Agree with others. If you are interested in the school that sent it, look for a possible code for an app fee waiver. And if the email gives any links or requests to reach out to them with questions, follow through if you are really interested in the school. Many colleges will be looking for students who show genuine interest.
Yeah like @Lindagaf said, some colleges give app fee waivers. For instance, I got the waivers from Fordham, Tampa, Mines etc. (can’t really apply to very many of these as I am an engineering major), so they’re worth looking out for.
So anything you get to entice you to apply is pure marketing. My daughter actually got a 4 year scholarship to a school she never applied to…
But… If you visit or have contact with the school like zoom meeting with a department head or the like and it’s a small school… Both my kids got hand written notes to apply after they toured. Both letters stated possible scholarships offers etc. Both kids “did” get half scholarships when getting these letters. Again, after the tour not before.
Absolutely. The more students they can get to apply for the fixed number of seats the more selective the college appears.
Nope