S20 got this one today from a T50-100 school. Maybe these are common on CC but my dear S is a B+/A- student and not used to getting this kind of love. The “pre-filled” line has us laughing our heads off. For the truly lazy.
"Based on what we know about you, we feel strongly that you’d be an excellent candidate for the incoming XXXX class. We understand you have a lot on your plate right now, so we’ve selected you for a SPECIAL OFFER to make your life easier:
We pre-filled your application with the information we already have.
We waived your essay requirement!
Plus, our application has no fee!"
Surely there are more funny emails from random schools that pop up. Anyone have any?
DD got a college brochure of some type in the mail. The back had a photo of a student with the words, “I can’t believe this is my life!”. She and DH cracked themselves up saying that in many different ways and inflections, most of which didn’t convey what that college probably intended. It really wasn’t the most effective marketing pitch.
Timedlies2, our financial and academic safety was the state flagship. If son had gotten such a nice letter, and it was a college worth considering, I’d be flattered, and of course, have son apply.
D got a ton of mail from LACs without engineering programs. They basically said “come major in math/physics” with a clear “you don’t want/need to be an engineer” message. Went right in the trash.
The only piece of mail we ever received from Harvard was for my S19 encouraging him to apply. It arrived during junior year on April Fool’s Day. We thought that was appropriate.
It’s not a consideration! That’s the whole point. This random perfectly good school located 2000 miles away sounds like they are fishing for more applicants. Why? Just so they can look more selective, I assume. Messes with your head though.
@TimeFlies2 Maybe they are fishing for applicants . Maybe they need more good applicants. Is your son a reasonable candidate for the school based on grades and scores? If so, it’s not that unreasonable. Maybe they’d like to have more kids from other parts of the country. My kids got these kinds of “pre-filled” applications (both email and snail mail) from smaller private schools. If your son’s grades and scores are below the 25%ile for the school, it appears to be more or a ploy to get more applicants so they can look more selective.
If he’s not interested, that’s fine, but I’m missing why it was so funny. Having school’s been looking for more applicants for generations? And sometimes, they get the ones they want that way.
It seemed very ironic to him that after he worked so hard right up until deadlines for his other schools, answering abstract supplement questions, that this random pretty decent school would come out of nowhere and offer to pre-fill the application and waive the essay requirement (and fee). He had never heard of anything like that except for fee waivers from some local schools that didn’t interest him. How come none of the schools he actually applied to offered to do that? Looks like he’s a solid candidate for this one, but same is true for almost all the ones he actually applied to.
Don’t jump to conclusions. D19 had a no fee no essay (well, “optional” essay) application offer. She did it because it was just a case of checking a box on the common app for her. She got an offer, with some merit $$. To be fair it wasn’t entirely unsolicited as she had visited the school, but I thought the no essay would be a dealbreaker (everyone here says optional essays aren’t really optional if you want to show interest), and it wasn’t. Her stats were kind of average for the school. Sometimes what seems to be looking to increase “selectivity”, isn’t that mercenary.
My D received a plain white envelope today with no return address. On the back, in big print, it said “WE ARE A UNIVERSITY THAT WON"T TELL YOU OUR NAME”.
OK, then you are a university that will go right in the trash, whoever you were.
I was surprised by how many emails he got allowing him to extend the deadline. And one school, with a national name, extended it several times (along with no fee, abbreviated app, etc.). He got several ‘okay, three more days’ emails. That school was one he had expressed early interest in, though. Not random. And they had been emailing him all along.
DD got the white envelope and was too curious not to go to the website & find out…it was Welsleyan…and now being recycled.
Funniest mail she received was from CalTech…CalTech! That just seems mean! The mailer itself wasn’t particularly humorous, but I think that’s even harder to get into then MIT. SMH
WVU sent S17 a TON of mail - funny to begin with because he said from day 1 he didn’t want to be more than a couple hours from home. But while S17 has many wonderful traits - being a hardworking student in high school wasn’t one of them! He was the kind that did what he had to to get by. We all chuckled at the WVU mailer starting with, “You’ve worked hard to get yourself where you are today”. LOL (he has worked hard at college, thankfully!).
