<p>Freshman parent here who is new to hearing from colleges through email. My freshman daughter took the PSAT along with a few dozen other younger students and the Juniors in her school. She filled in the information correctly with her HS graduation date as 2015 but is now receiving various emails from colleges. Most she has ignored but she did receive one from Rice congratulating her on her PSAT score and encouraging her to consider Rice. Ironically, this is a school she is interested in. Are these email solicitations just that? Solicitations with no real interest. They invited her to fill in additional information on their web site, I assume for a mailing list. </p>
<p>We are new to this and while it is exciting for her, I wonder if this is just a typical "form" email or if they had a specific PSAT score range they sent these emails to?</p>
<p>Yes it is a “form” email and yes, they probably had a specific score range. DS took the SAT in 8th grade and got a letter from an elite university congratulating him for taking an interest that early in his education. They could not possibly have known him. It’s one of many marketing tools. I’m sure these schools would like to know your DD.<br>
That said, it’s good that she is excited about the process, but there will be many emails and letters.</p>
<p>Thanks Desilu,
I suspected as much. She received several so far and a few through snail mail so she is keeping them in a folder for later. The one from Rice just seemed different as it specifically mentioned her PSAT while the others just seemed informational. Rice does seem like it would be a good fit, though but in a few years!</p>
<p>Sais - since your D is interested in Rice, and if her PSAT scores end up getting the attention of the National Merit folks and they send her a letter asking which 2 schools she’d like to send notification she is in the running, have her pick Rice and they will waive the application fee.</p>
<p>Yes, when she takes the PSAT again junior year (I assume based on your post that she is still a freshman or sophomore), if she is still interested in Rice, she should list it as one of the schools to which she would like to have her scores sent. Rice is pretty great about giving students fee waivers.</p>
<p>Thanks for the information everyone. Well now she just got more email and this time it was from Stanford for their summer program. This is very exciting for her and I hope it will help her to start thinking about the schools more critically. She originally wanted to go to Cambridge because that is where Stephen Hawking used to teach. A friend went to Rice on a full ride athletic scholarship for track and now she is focused on Rice because they also offer Astrophysics. Another friend works at the computing division at the Stanford Linear Accelerator so now she is also interested in Stanford. Having fees waived would certainly be nice!</p>