<p>In the last few weeks, we received many letters from colleges all over the country to encourage my son to visit their websites, visit their campuses, or request more information about their colleges. I am wondering how those colleges got information about my son. I think they are just junk mails. By the way my son is a sophomore only.
Here are the most recent ones:
Washington U st Louis
West Point
Navy Academy
Caltech
Washington and Lee
University of Min twin cities
Emory
U of Chicago
U of Rochester
RIT</p>
<p>Did your son take the PSAT’s in October as a sophomore? If so, there is a box to check off if you would like to receive information from colleges. The CollegeBoard distributes the names to the colleges. Get used to the mail. It can get overwhelming. All colleges and universities are trying to increase their applicant pools.</p>
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Especially from WUSTL, W & L, and U of Chicago. Of the ones you list, they were the most relentless when my kids were applying to schools. Don’t know if I’d call this “junk mail” - some of the publications contain helpful info (most of which is available at the school’s website, however). Between the time my middle child applied to schools for 2005 and the youngest did for 2008, we noticed a shift to emails. D2 accumulated about 300 more pieces of paper mail than d3, though even the youngest amassed a huge bin of stuff.</p>
<p>Same here. My son is a sophomore who took the PSAT. He is also getting a ton of emails!!</p>
<p>Get used to the mail! I passed the annoying stage and then became grateful! </p>
<p>Make lemonade from a lemon: I cut all the reference with my child’s name and address, place it in a plastic bag…and believe me I still use it as labels to mail letters to my child and other last minute applications.</p>
<p>Best wishes to your son.</p>
<p>Most places take junk mail for recycling.</p>
<p>Many on this site have talked about testing services selling blocks of mailing information on students to colleges. Colleges can specify certain characteristics (3.0-3.5 GPA, western states, minority student, male/female, whatever) and then how many names they want and they pay by the name or by the size of the group, and that’s how they do their marketing. Pretty standard.</p>
<p>My parents just gave it all to me and said I could either recycle it or fill my room with it, they didn’t care as long as it stayed in my room and off of their table.</p>
<p>I received 2-3 pieces of mail every day from the second semester of sophomore year until, uh, two weeks ago. It doesn’t stop. I found the most aggressive school to be Coppin State. I did not get a high volume of mail from WUSTL, although apparently everyone else did. Chicago and Pitt are also relentless. The University of Richmond send 7-8 HUGE books.</p>
<p>Considering it was the first time I went through the college admission process, I used it to educate myself so I could guide and support my DD.
I gave the nice brochures and college viewbooks to my DD’s school - they had it when other students were interested.</p>
<p>Yep, the College Board releases contact information gleaned from the PSAT usually in late January/early February. And so another cycle begins!</p>
<p>Just pitch all and do not waste your time.</p>
<p>Greenery, very clever! I can see why you’re Green. :)</p>
<p>Is there any useful way to save some of it and organize it? Has anybody developed a system that proved beneficial? My D’s is just starting to pile up. Should she keep the ones from the schools she is interested in just to havethe contact information or is there some other useful info.? At the end of the day, the only thing that counts is the application that the student sends in, right?</p>
<p>The one college that sent me the most mail was New Haven by far. First of all, they had for some reason my name twice in their system (one was my full name and the other was my shortened name, ie. josh joshua) and they would send me literally two things a week, but I received double of everything. So I usually received between 4-6 letters from new haven ever single week. SO ANNOYING. It’s pretty much stopped, but I still get duplicates time to time.</p>
<p>Here’s our system:</p>
<p>Early on, ds would look at it and decide if he was even remotely interested. If not, it went in one box; if so, it went in another. After awhile he told me to open the mail and let him know if there was anything interesting for him to read; the rest I threw in the reject box and if he didn’t agree this college looked interesting, then it went into the junk box, too. The summer before his senior year, I had him go back through the reject box to see if something now piqued his interest. Once he had his list in fall of senior year, I went through the “good” box and sorted alphabetically and made a file for each college to which he was applying.</p>
<p>My D did not take the PSAT. In fact she did not take a single standardized test until she sat for the SAT in Oct '09 of this, her senior year. She applied ED to her first choice school and was accepted in mid-Dec so she never applied to any other schools. Despite this she was recruited by many schools, and relentlessly by about a half-dozen schools, mostly through email communications. The most popular marketing technique utilized was the “VIP application” solicitation which waived the application fee and did not require any application essays, simply a basic application and school transcripts. Right up until February 15, the deadline for most applications (and even a few days beyond) she continued to receive email solicitations. She never responded to any of them, but we wondered where these schools obtained information about my D. We are now assuming based on the comments on this thread that the College Board sold or otherwise provided these schools with information about her including her email address.</p>
<p>Clark, another obvious source of mail to ds was based on the scores on his AP exams. Did she take any of those?</p>
<p>This is an excellent time to educate the offspring on the difference between a marketing department and an admissions office. </p>
<p>Make sure they know it is the job of marketing to get as many applications in as possible. Remind them that every application is $50 or $75 for the college. </p>
<p>Have some fun with looking for trends in the material. How many colleges show a student under a tree? How many show trees in fall foliage? How many show students and a professor having a class outside? (bonus points for class + outside+ tree and double for + fall foliage tree). Can you find any errors? (My favorite oops: Occidental used a coyote paw print to represent their tiger mascot. Canines have nail prints, felines’ paw prints do not show nail marks). </p>
<p>And make sure you talk to them about a “rush” – whether it’s a handsome athlete, a Greek organization, a college or a car salesman, there is the experience of someone flattering you immensely and the business of you figuring out how much is reality and how much is their agenda.</p>
<p>Don’t forget to contrast the weather of the school with the pictures. No matter wear the school is located, the pictures shown are from warm, sunny days (85% of the time, I’d say). This is especially worth a giggle for Yale, Harvard, Bennington, UChicago and the like. Those pictures often have to be taken in the summer semester or in the very first or last weeks of the year!</p>
<p>Mail just started arriving here for my HS sophomore daughter (she took the PSAT, school pays for it) though it seems as though it just stopped for her college freshman brother. It was like old times to see that University of Miami letter in the mailbox. I throw all of it into a big basket and later, probably months from now, we will sort to see if any of it is useful. We kept about 15 big files for colleges my son was initially interested in, later narrowed down to the nine to which he actually applied. The whole project occupied the dining room table for months.</p>