<p>I'm currently an eigth grader who has applied to a couple of the "most prestigious" boarding schools. I've attended a public school all my life, however, all of a sudden, I'm getting emails from random boarding schools I've never even heard of or given my email address to. Does anyone know why this is occurring?</p>
<p>Did you take the SSAT? If you scored well, I think some schools buy lists and mail to students. That said, my daughter scored extremely well and we received not one email/mail piece from any school we didn’t request it from.</p>
<p>Is there a box to check during SSAT registration asking whether or not you want to receive info. from schools ?</p>
<p>Did you take part in a talent search? TIPS, NUMATS, etc. My D2 was top scorer for the whole region in NUMATS in 8th grade, and got quite a few boarding school mailings that we suspect are related to that.</p>
<p>Our daughter did not take any standardized tests prior to SSATs (unless NLE, the National Latin Exam, were to be on anyone’s radar), but did receive one or two unsolicited mailed (not emailed) brochures after SSATs, from schools other than those from which we’d requested info. It seems fairly random, and might be geographically based as well.</p>
<p>No, I haven’t taken the SSAT yet, but I will do so in January</p>
<p>My son scored ‘okay’ on the SSATS (not above 85%) but my guess it was ‘good enough’ to warrant interest from a handful schools we never made any inquiry with at all. Some of the emails we received were from Episcipal, Salisbury, and Loomis Chafee (sorry I can’t spell). I thought it was strange- but my theory was there is a stradegy of sorts at play. After my daughter scored a 1450 on her SATs- a score of merit, but not perhaps up to standard of the first choice Ivy she was shooting for- she received an abundance of solicitations from very good second tier schools that now felt they had a shot of being her ‘fallback’? Someone had told me this is what some schools do to boost the average SAT scores of their applicants- and maybe its the same for the SSATs? Just a thought- if you score very well, they won’t bother trying to woo you, assuming you are well positioned for a top tier school?</p>
<p>After SSAT (or after SAT through talent search), we received several mailings about merit scholarships from Culver Academy, Portsmouth Abbey School, Fountain Valley School, and McCallie School.<br>
We did not receive emails though.<br>
We’re receiving emails from some consultants after visiting various websites or registering e-book purchase of McClure’s Private School Application Workbook by F. McClure.</p>
<p>Gypsy, I don’t thinks that your last sentence is accurate (I realize it’s conjecture, but…). My dd had stellar scores and still got a couple of unsolicited mailings (no emails, though).</p>