My one daughter has had AT LEAST 30 letters / cards / brochures, other things come to her from Vanderbuilt. And that is just since January. My daughter has expressed no interest in going there, and in fact just throws it all in the recycle bin…
What I find interesting is that she has a twin with the same GPA, who has never had a single piece of mail come from there.
We even had one letter that was hand signed by someone, though I don’t recall who signed it.
The most we have had from any other school is just 3 or 4 items BETWEEN the 2 of them. ( Franklin and Marshall )
Just standard procedure from Vandy? I don’t know much about what these things contained as I generally only saw them before they were open.
She will never go there. Probably would turn it down if it was free. I’m just curious.
My D got a ridiculous amount of mailings from UChicago. She wanted a LAC and did not apply. Some colleges just seem to do this. Personally I think sending one mailing is a better way to go – either the school can make its case and will catch a student’s eye or it won’t.
Years ago son got weekly (or more) mailings from a school he had zero interest in. Had two paper grocery bags filled with all of the colleges’ mailings by the time he left for college to recycle since they got saved in a forgotten pile.
right now it is UChicago. My daughter is going to pursue a BFA. The worst part is that she has an ACT of 26. Her GPA and class rank are fine, but there is no way she should be getting mailings from them.
D15 got tons of mail from a school she had no interest in, had never expressed interest in, and wasn’t a fit for her at all. They were relentless. The trees that school killed sending mail to my kid! And every bit of it went straight into the recycling bin.
DD got multiple mailings from every Ivy league, JHU, Vandy, state colleges, places we never heard of, etc. …she was academically qualified for all, but it seemed like a bit much. That is the business colleges are in now a days. They get your address from the testing agencies, you might be able to opt out but I’m not sure.
My son has been bombarded by a couple of schools, University of Chicago,Whitenberg University,Case Western and Reed University - weekly ! We see it and it immediately goes into the recycling bin.
Vandy here too. And to make it even more fun … my neighbor is on some local alumni board or such. Everything the school sends to DD, neighbor sends to me, so we get double. (She hasn’t even taken the PSAT yet, so I’m sure we’ll get even more after that happens.)
S18 gets next to nothing. S16 was inundated by several schools even before making NMSF. S18 has a very good, albeit not elite, SAT score. He may be getting a lot of email, though.
Curiously, the flood has slowed to a trickle recently even though S18 is now actually ready to apply to college. His test scores are all stellar and he just took SAT subject tests in June, so I expected a lot more mail than he’s gotten. For a while it was 3-6 pieces per day, but so far this summer it’s more like 3-6 pieces per week.
University of Chicago and Wash U of St. Louis. Their strategy is to get as many students to apply as possible to keep the acceptance rate low. They aren’t the only schools to do this but it is sobering to think U of Chicago’s acceptance rate was 40% in 2005. Was a fine school in 2005 and is the same fine school today. Only the marketing changed.