<p>Hi fellow prospective Bowdoiners!
I recently received a letter from the Bowdoin Dean of Admissions to my home address, which sparked my curiosity regarding several immediately evident problems:
How do they know my home address, or even who I am, for that matter? I never sent the any letters myself or contacted them in any way. Even on the SAT registration thing, I checked the box for colleges not to send me info about themselves. The letter says “the College Board has indicated that you are likely to possess the academic and personal qualities to thrive in our diverse, dynamic learning community.” As far as I’m aware, the College Board is not permitted to inform anyone of my SAT score.
The fact that the College Board told Bowdoin about me is in itself problematic, as all they really “know” about me is my score, and perhaps my essay. By that logic, Bowdoin should be sending everyone with my score or better a letter, which I regard as highly counter-intuitive.
To anyone else who might have gotten something similar from any college: what does the letter “really mean”? It could be purely an informative brochure type thing on one extreme or a de facto admission letter on the other. I don’t know what to make of it, though I’m certain it’s a positive sign, that’s at least how it seems.
I should write them back, shouldn’t I? Or not? I sure want to, however hard it’s proving at the moment.</p>
<p>Have you taken AP classes? They could have gotten your address from that registration, if you didn’t indicate you didn’t want mail on that form too?</p>
<p>You can probably expect a lot more mail like this - it’s basically from colleges that want to inform you about their school, because you got a certain SAT or AP score or whatever. It isn’t any type of commitment by the school to admit you - it’s more an advertisement than anything else.</p>
<p>Again… expect a lot of these in the coming months!</p>
<ol>
<li>Collegeboard might have sent your SAT, PSAT, or AP scores to Bowdoin, but from another test when you did not check no.</li>
<li>Yes, Bowdoin sends a bunch of letters out. That way, more people apply. Less people are accepted. Bowdoin goes up in the college rankings. That’s the way colleges work.</li>
<li>The letter is a positive sign - it means you are Bowdoin quality. That and only that. It is not a defacto admission letter. Bowdoin would like you to investigate them more.</li>
</ol>
<p>This is all assuming you got a typical “We are impressed by you. We hope you consider our college” letter.</p>
<p>Okay, thanks for your replies, that was really fast!
I didn’t take any AP courses, just the SAT.
I still don’t get how they have my address though, isn’t it a breach of privacy for College Board to give it to them? Also, could you maybe estimate how many of these letters they send out? And finally, is it a good idea to reply to their letter?</p>
<p>Don’t get too hung up on this idea that people are out there violating your privacy. The odds are that you (or a parent) actively and directly consented to have this sort of thing happen.</p>
<p>Did you take the PSAT? When you registered for a standardized test or another web site similar to this one in some ways, did you (or, again, a parent) complete a profile? Does your high school college guidance department share basic information?</p>
<p>The most likely scenario is that you (or a parent – I can’t stress enough the idea that parents are out there filling out forms about their kids like there’s no tomorrow) checked a box with any number of entities at any number of opportunities agreeing to share some basic information with colleges that may be interested in you as a candidate. It may not have anything to do with the College Board at all. At least not without you first giving them some kind of consent. Or, then again, maybe someone at Bowdoin installed a secret monitoring application on your laptop webcam and they’re looking at you right now.</p>