<p>Remember back when in high school, your child took the ACT, SAT or even PSAT, and all the sudden, they started getting mail from colleges?</p>
<p>Well, does the same thing happen when your child takes the GRE?</p>
<p>Son will be taking the GRE for the first time in a couple of weeks, just a dry run to see what it's like, and depending on his scores, or maybe even not, I wonder if he'll start getting material on grad schools.</p>
<p>Or do schools just wait for you to look them up and come to them?</p>
<p>I guess I'm asking, is there any marketing from grad schools once a student takes the GRE?</p>
<p>I seem to remember getting a little bit of marketing, but I honestly don’t remember if it was from the GREs or not. Most of the places that market aren’t the top programs in their field. It was generally ones which only had score-based admissions criteria.</p>
<p>I think my favorite ad was from either RPI or RIT. It said, “Hey, even though you didn’t choose us for undergrad, you should think about us for grad!” I think they still send me a happy birthday e-mail every year too, lol.</p>
<p>That’s the kind of thing I was wondering about. Colleges that you didn’t choose for undergrad, maybe didn’t even apply to, will they start trying to recruit you once you take the GRE? </p>
<p>Since son’s industry of choice is not represented in our area at all, he’d like a little guidance on where to start. Even if it is score based admission, if it’s a good fit for him and doing research he’s interested in, it would be worth looking into.</p>
<p>He’s no rocket scientist, and won’t get into a top program, anyway, so anyplace that’s near the industry is fine for him.</p>
<p>He might want to try asking professors in his department for recommendations. They should be able to give him much better guidance than a bunch of random ads in the mail.</p>
<p>I do recommend he spends about 15 minutes prepping for the writing section by just reading how the format works and what sorts of things the graders are looking for. I’m a terrible writer, but since I knew exactly what they wanted, I was able to get a 5.5.</p>
<p>It isn’t typical to get materials from grad schools, like for undergrad. Or recruiting. They won’t even know what field he is going into, or what research he wants to do, right? Ask profs as mentioned above, look at profs that publish papers he is interested in and see where they are teaching.</p>
<p>GRE is often the least thing they are looking at when evaluating apps, so getting literature won’t be any indication of fit. They just want to be sure it passes some reasonable threshold usually. Having profs you want to study with is better indication of fit. Schools take a wide variety of gpa’s and gre’s and the rest of your ication can have a lot of weight. So you shoot a little blind, and that’s why profs who know his work can really help.</p>
<p>I was in charge of the Graduate Admissions office for my university for 3 years and I am still doing graduate admissions for my department (physics). IIT certainly does buy GRE lists as do many other universities and we send email to qualified students. The primary goal is to promote our Masters programs because Ph.D. applicants usually come through a different route as previous posters have indicated. Faculty mentors are a big source of information.</p>
<p>DD took the test yesterday, so I guess we will wait and see.</p>
<p>Montegut, My son took them in May. He has received two letters from 2 schools. Just kind of general please consider us, here are our programs etc. I do think it may be related to the GREs because he had arranged to have his scores sent to these two schools.</p>
<p>He does receive some emails from schools unrelated to GRE or his schools of interest. Just marketing I guess. </p>
<p>Nothing like the avalanche of mail and emails for undergrad.</p>