Mailings did NOT pique interest in thus household–merit money did. S was determined to go to a U that would give him significant merit aid and he did. It worked out well for us.
I second U Chicago. Thought provoking, fun, interesting, cool. The only mailings out of hundreds that nearly persuaded her to apply.
MY son checked the box at the SAT’s and got mailings. My daughters didn’t check the box and got no mailings. This was some years ago so perhaps there are other ways now for colleges to track potential applicants.
My daughter received a birthday card from a random student from one college. Just creepy. I imagine they thought it would be a personal touch.
Found out about U Rochester’s unique curriculum from a postcard mailing. The postcard was a bit comical and made us laugh too. Loved it.
The “form letter” mailings that came in droves went right into the recycle container. What a waste of time, money and trees.
D has received two mailings that really made her smile. One was a handwritten note from our tour guide at UBC (who D REALLY liked), thanking us for coming to visit all the way from _____. The other was also a handwritten note, from a current National Scholar at OU who is from our city, offering to answer any questions D might have. Nice.
I’ll be on the lookout now for a handwritten birthday card! Not sure that will go over as well!
S was impressed with Knox’s mailing. Ditto Franklin & Marshall. Both of those are geographically unlikely because we’re in CA and S prefers to stay in this half of the country, but they didn’t hit the trash bin immediately like most of the rest.
I think that unless the school is Harvard/Stanford who cannot turn down apps fast enough it can defectively benefit from aggressive marketing. Like at UChicago–it went from No.15 to No.3 in less than ten years, with its mailing blitz. What does a college have to lose other than some mailing cost.
A couple schools got on our radar based on mailings, but were ultimately dropped because their program was not what she wanted. We keep getting random mailings from places we’ve never heard of that don’t have her intended program, so it’s definitely not tailored to anything we can figure other than a purchased mailing list.
The University of Notre Dame apparently wants us … to apply. I had to explain to my daughter the concept of “rejection bait” that I learned here. 
I really think it is disingenuous for Ivy League and other “elite” colleges with acceptance rates of 10 percent or less to solicit “rejection bait” applications to both make money as well as to reinforce their reputations as highly selective by sending mailers to prospective students with a ridiculously low chance of being admitted.
During our D’s college search, we used both the Cappex and Parchment web sites to predict which colleges she would have a realistic chance of being accepted to and ignored the other college mailings we received, no matter how slick and appealing they were.
Most of the colleges our D applied to had nice mailings, but the best college our D ultimately was accepted to and chose to enroll in had both a superior mailing as well as a good campus visit program. The mailing they sent to our family was more like a business proposal, but she had already made up her mind at that point. The mailing did reinforce that she made the right choice and made us as her parents more comfortable with her decision.
All college mailings went into the trash. ChoatieKid never saw them. IMO, they are the equivalent of credit card offers. Totally useless, and shame on you Chicago for decimating several forests.
Not sure if this qualifies, but a letter from WUSTL inviting S to apply for a free diversity fly in definitely got our attention.
The first physical mail D18 received after her 10th grade PSAT test was very successful: UChicago and Northwestern. She wanted to go to them. We were proud parents thinking that our darling D18 was being recruited by such fine institutions … then I started googling for more information (I knew about NWU from football but not much about UChicago). It seemed like everyone received mail from them. I think I stumbled upon CC from that searching. Anyway, I looked at D18’s stats at the time and UChicago’s stats and they didn’t match. That’s when I realized that the mailings were bait for rejection. D18 even got a T-shirt in the mail from UC. If D18 applied there they would reject her and say, “thanks for helping lower our admission rate!”.
The second most effective mailing was the RHP letter from USC. Just the other day she was saying how she wishes she would have applied for it (never mind that there’s no way she would be ready for college thousands of miles away in a couple of months).
Three years after S’s HS graduation we have begun receiving a lot of college mailings…for the HS student who lives across the street and shares a first name with S 
U of Chicago are S1’s bro’s. ESPECIALLY since the T shirt.
He doesn’t have a hope in hell of getting accepted there, unless they decide they need a Centerfielder, or they give a disproportionate amount of weight to his having a relative on the Faculty.
I know that my Daughter enjoyed getting them. I think U of Chicago’s she enjoyed the most like many others have said. I know the one she got for Texas A&M Corpus Christi made me want to go to the beach.
Kind of was amazed at some of the stuff smaller universities will offer kids to come visit. One of the schools was offering an IPAD to come visit the campus. Don’t remember what school it was.
My D became increasingly aggravated by all of the UChicago mailings – she felt like they were baiting her just to reject her. Did not apply.
@droppedit
That is not necessarily true. Universities like UChicago send material, books and cards to many kids to get their attention because beside their basic numbers (AP scores, SAT/ACT), that they can find in College Board, they don’t know anything about the students and their strengths. As a parent you can think that that college is out of your kid’s league, but they cannot know that. For example, in my daughter school, on of the top students applied to UCh. No one could think that he would not be accepted, and he was not. Another student, very good, but far from the top group, was accepted. She is an incredible ballerina. They could not know that before her application. Maybe she decided to apply after receiving those amazing cards, posters and brochures.
Speaking of effectiveness, we keep getting mailings from a college I actually like very much. But every darn one of them has their pathetic looking mascot on it. And that has been effectively turning me off of what would probably be a very good choice.
^ this is a joke, right? Even if that sounds silly, the color of the college made a difference in my daughter’s preferences. The color of Northwestern was a turn off for her, for example. She loves maroon!!! 