Effectiveness of college mailings

What with two new seniors in the house, we’ve received a lot of college mailings this past year, with more arriving every day. Most end up in the trash. But I was just looking at a mailing from Knox College (for geographical reasons, not a school my children are looking at), and it impressed me in how, in a small space, it managed to make it clear what sort of students belong at the college and to make itself sound interesting (I assume) to those students. My kids are uninterested in brochures, but I’m a sucker for them. Which colleges do you think do the best job of accurately presenting themselves in their marketing materials, and did any of your children become interested in certain colleges because of those materials?

Carleton, where my son attended. We’d never heard of it before I joined cc and he started getting mailings sophomore year.

Wyoming sent a calendar. It was great as it had a picture for every month, but also the deadlines, SAT/ACT dates, events happening on campus (football, homecoming, finals week, Jan return to school, spring break).

WashU definitely sends out the most. Most most most.

My kids adored the UChicago mailings when D1 was applying (10 years ago -gulp). They were creative, intellectual, and funny. Still pretty good, but not quite as “sparky” 5 years later when D2 applied.

I like the Wyoming idea of the calendar. It seems like it would help a student picture what their year there would be like.

We looked up and down the east coast for colleges for my S. After seeing many schools my son decided that he really liked mid-sized universities that were in or near an urban area. We had not looked at Fordham which was in his academic wheelhouse because it was so close by and we had preconceived notions of what a college int he Bronx would be like. Then one day he got a mailing for Fordham and we decided to visit on a whim. Well…we were blown away by the beauty of the campus and the academic match for for my S, we were impressed by the the kids we met, and we were comfortable with the surrounding area when we walked around (never realized the school was so close to Arthur Avenue). Fordham immediately and quite unexpectedly jumped to be my S’s top choice and things could not have worked out better – he got in with a nice merit aid package and had a fantastic 4 years there. Very glad we got that mailing!

Knox is in fact a cool school! Chicago’s mailings were interesting enough to DS that he went to meet the rep at school. Ultimately, he didn’t apply, but they served the purpose of getting him to seek out more info. The communication from both Denison and Earlham was excellent (although I don’t recall when in the process that started.) Both conveyed a genuine interest in having students make the right “fit” and providing the info needed to assess that.

I think this a question where YMMV would be the answer.

My two kids didn’t apply to colleges that sent them unsolicited mailings. They did read mailings they requested.

We had boxes of these mailings with both of our kids…lots of recycling

“WashU definitely sends out the most. Most most most.”

This might vary depending upon the student’s state of residence. We only got one ad (per daughter) from WUSTL. We got an ad pretty much every week from Simmon’s College.

We didn’t apply to any university based on getting unsolicited ads. To me the main result of the ads is that my daughters got an introduction to aggressive marketing. IMHO both daughters passed the test with flying colors.

We lived in Florida. My daughter got at least one piece of mail from WashU every week in the fall. Sometimes there were as many as 4. She’s never expressed any interest in the school, and didn’t know anything about it.

We found out about Rose-Hulman’s Operation Catapult, which my daughter eventually attended, because the brochure was in the form of a Rube Goldberg machine cartoon and younger brother at the time was fascinated with Rube Goldberg. He pulled it out of the mail and was studying it, which got daughter’s attention.

For those for whom it is not too late, tell your kids not to check the box about getting mailings, when they take standardized tests. There are other ways to research school and be in control of the mail!

D only got one mailing from Princeton and the dog ate it twice. The dog generally doesn’t eat mail but, sure enough, grabbed it off a high place twice. I didn’t really mind because as soon as I saw that envelope I thought it was a mean tease as D really loves Princeton and would get in when pigs fly.

@MACmiracle Princeton teases parents too: we got a letter this week from their dean of admission addressed to “Family of Twindaughter” telling us how affordable Princeton would be. Gee, thanks for letting us know!

@thumper1 Wow. Then I guess you had to quickly request info from all the biggies, lest they commit some kind of illegal procedure and risk getting tossed in the bin.

My solid, if unspectacular, kiddo got unsolicited mail from Columbia-Po and that big, beautiful book from Yale. Didn’t see the harm in leafing through.

@compmom

My kids both started to get college mailings at the end of 9th grade…LONG before they took the ACT or SAT.

We never figured out why.

We live in CT. WashU won the mail prize with DD too…2005 or,so.

I suggested she apply and include all the mailings…or at least a large sampling…and put something in her cover letter like

“I hope you will consider my application to your school. As your mailings indicate, I am exactly the type of student your school wishes to enroll.”

She had NO interest…

We found out about the McDermott Scholarship at UT Dallas through a mailing. It wasn’t one that was on our radar at all. For whatever reason, the initial mailing was addressed to my husband and I rather than my son which is the only reason I opened it. Had it been addressed to him, it probably would’ve gone straight to the recycling bin like much of the college mailings. But I did open it, and read it, and said to my son, “I really think you should check this one out…”

He was skeptical, really skeptical. But he liked what he saw (about the college in general as well as the scholarship) and decided it was worth a try.

He’s leaving for UT Dallas on Thursday. As a McDermott Scholar. So it turns out that letter was very effective.

We still have no idea why we got that mailing. Other finalist’s parents swore they didn’t get a “recruitment letter” (not how I had categorized it…) but had heard about the program through a guidance counselor. I suspect it was easily passed over as most mailings are and that it was dumb luck that it caught my eye because it was addressed to me.

So sometimes what makes a mailing stick out might be something as subtle as how its addressed.

Look for free application codes on the mailings.

U Chicago won the prize at my house for the number of mailings received - we live in AL, and had visited them. Barnard just sent a truly gorgeous, expensive brochure that makes me (mom) want to go there. It’s so interesting to see which schools send things and which don’t.

DS only looked at the mailings from colleges already on his list, and those not much. Everything else went straight to recycling except some of the ones with detailed NMSF financial offers. UChicago was on his list, and he didn’t look at those mailings much; there were so many. I don’t recall the college he will be attending even mailing him once.

It seemed he got a lot fewer mailings than others reported. I don’t know–it may be regional.

When I was in high school, the more someone mailed, the less I wanted to go there. What a waste of paper!