<p>Within the past week I have started receiving emails (I have received two so far) from Yale without having gone out of my way to inquire info from them. The emails have been largely informational, but two emails over the course of three days has piqued my interest. Does their previously unsolicited contact with me really have any significance? </p>
<p>no not really. If you haven’t already started, be ready for the deluge of college informational material. </p>
<p>By “not really” don means “absolutely not.” I got unsolicited emails and letters from all sorts of colleges, including a book (yes, a book) pitching Yale, which for some reason they sent me twice. I applied and was rejected despite being very well qualified.</p>
<p>These sorts of e-mails and letters usually mean that you got a pretty good score on the PSAT. Beyond that, they are marketing tools.</p>
<p>No significance what so ever. Don’t even think it means you are in the ball park to be considered. Most colleges recruit heavily and they recruit applicants who they know don’t stand a shot at being remotely considered (it helps them stay on top of some ranking systems and makes the parents of high achieving students think that school is in hot demand-making it seem all the more attractive). They send such letters to most students. Once your PSAT or ACT application requests your information be considered for recruitment, you will get a slew of fancy invites to apply. How do you think these schools get 30,000 applicants for 1500 slots? How many do you think are given a second of thought? 3,000? Maybe, depending upon the school. Some have to look at more because they know better rated schools will take their best applicants. And even schools close to being the top tier know that they are safeties for a good number of top students. But even so, if your scores and grades are not close to the 25%-75% range for a particular school, you don’t have a shot unless you have a remarkable world renown achievement. For an Ivy plus school, that would be like getting a bronze in the last Olympics but having only a 1800 across the 3 parts of the SAT and having a GPA that includes a few A-'s or B+'s. No, colleges don’t randomly select a few people far off their scores to see if they will do ok. There are really very few surprises. So forget about the schools out of range for you. There are plenty of great schools that will be glad to send you an invitation to attend.</p>