<p>Just this week he received notification that he was accepted at two major universities. He never sent and application fee or submitted an applicaiton. Last spring when he took the SAT, he did have his scores sent to these schools. One school he visited. No interviews were held.<br>
Puzzeled.</p>
<p>Make sure to check the envelope again. It seems that you missed the certified check that goes with such acceptance offer; the current value for 2009 ranges between $1,000 and $5,000. ;)</p>
<p>■■■■■ alert !</p>
<p>Or the son knows he applied but the mom does not.</p>
<p>Kid may very well have submitted the ap.</p>
<p>Some schools will auto admit someone with a certain score with no other info and no application. they buy the scores from the college board.</p>
<p>My son got a full-tuition scholarship with the possibility of another scholarship that covered room, board & books, from a school he had never heard of. Both of my boys were offered auto-admission with full-rides, leadership and research programs from our local state university. They never considered these schools. It happens. I feel sure these were based on their SAT/ACT scores.</p>
<p>It happens - my D was accepted to Harvard and Yale without applying.
She turned them both down though, and went to our local Community
College where she studies automotive technology.</p>
<p>A friend of mine told me a funny story today. Her son applied to University A (under duress - they have the exact major he wants and offer terrific merit aid, but he thinks the school is totally uncool). By the time he had to send in his first semester grades he had already been accepted at some other colleges and decided not to bother. First letter: Your application is not complete; we have not yet received your transcript. Second letter: Won’t you please send us your transcript. Third letter: Due to the unusually high volume of applications, we have had problems with our Fax machines. Please resend your transcript. Fourth letter: Congratulations! You have been admitted to University A!</p>
<p>Son is chortling. He’s just waiting to see if they’ll offer him merit aid…</p>
<p>
Right…</p>
<p>My foster step son was just two weeks from graduating with the highest honors from a top IVY when he received his admissions rejection letter which had been lost in the mail all these 4 years. Long story short; No graduation, and what’s worse they want us to pay back 4 years of full tuition/room & board and fees and books and club dues and parking permit fees and monthly stipend and toll monies he received these 4 years from his scholarship. He was even forced to decline the Rhodes Scholarship he had been awarded just a month previously. </p>
<p>Disappointed does not even begin to describe our feelings about the situation. </p>
<p>Ques: Do you think it’s ok to ask for our app fee back? (waiting for a group <<hug>> ).</hug></p>
<p>
Why stop there?: Get a good lawyer and sue for pain and suffering. :)</p>
<p>MarinMom, the exact same thing happened to my nephew. Very funny, no matter what he did they refused to withdraw his application!</p>
<p>A lot of schools will automatically apply students either based on SAT score submissed, or campus visits, or web site visits when students click on a “request information” button that is actually an “apply now” button. </p>
<p>One reason this is done is to raise the number of applicants which in turn reduces the number of admits and therefore makes the school look more selective … all with the goal of improve the ranking in the all-important US News rankings.</p>
<p>That makes sense. It did make my son feel pretty good and may even slightly consider one school whose basketball team is doing very well. I’m glad we didn’t waste money on the application fee and he didn’t have to sumbit the supplemental essay! If we only knew it was this easy. :)</p>
<p>Re Marin Mom’s story: Pretty much the same thing happened to me in the Jurassic Era with one of those colleges that goes by only its first initial on CC. I intended to apply and then decided against it, but the school had already sent my transcript and recommendations, and I had had my SAT scores reported. Their last letter told me that they didn’t need any essays from me, but that they couldn’t confirm my admission unless I paid the application fee.</p>
<p>@benny1: What if some goofball decided to put all 800s? Do you think the colleges would doublecheck the scores?</p>
<p>Another way that you can be accepted somewhere without applying is if you apply to any of the UC campuses. If you are UC eligible but aren’t accepted at any of the campuses you applied to, they will pass your application along to the other campuses. A kid down the street was mystified last year when he got acceptance letters from UC Riverside and Merced, neither of which he had applied to.</p>
<p>woami: Of course they wait for official scores. What I meant to say is some schools make it so easy to apply that people apply without realizing they’ve done so. OP said that her son did send his scores to the schools to which he was admitted and he even had an interview at one.</p>