<p>8 in today’s mail: Rockhurst, Colorado School of Mines, Washington & Lee, Williams, RPI, Emory, Minnesota and Beloit, 3 for summer programs (Brown, Stanford and Carleton). Very similar to what arrived last year after our son took the PSAT as a sophomore. His comment then and now: “All these letters look the same and ask me to go to a Web site to find my career/major/future. If they are targeting bright kids, why do they think we won’t see that they are all exactly the same?”</p>
<p>Most expensive mailings we’ve seen: Ohio State and Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>One that made us laugh the most: We are Missouri fans. We bleed black and gold and despise the university of kansas. (kansas is neither a proper place nor a proper noun so it should not be uppercase.) Last week, our son received a four-color postcard from ku with a large jayhawk (their bird mascot with the huge yellow beak and shoes) and “Be Mine” in pink inside a white heart. On the back, this poem: roses are crimson, violets are blue, you’d make a great jayhawk, just chose ku! Happy Valentine’s Day, Future jayhawk! LOVE, your friends at the ku office of admissions and scholarships.</p>
<p>^^^
That’s funny! Ole Miss sent my older son a card for his birthday this week. Interesting, since he has never expressed any interest in Ole Miss!</p>
<p>All you folks who criticize the mailings… should get together with the folks on the other threads complaining that schools don’t cast a wide enough net, admit from the same pool of 25 HS’s – Brookline High, Newton High, Roxbury Latin, etc. and by the time they are done with their legacies, development cases, and helmet athletes, have no room for my little Dick or Jane.</p>
<p>I’d love to see that mash-up. “Schools should make an effort to get kids from outside their geographic region to explore their college.” “No- schools should stop trying to get my kid in Arkansas from looking at going to college in Alaska”. “No- why hasn’t anyone in my town ever heard of the fantastic LAC my kid is applying to? You’d think they’d send a letter to the guidance office once in a while.”</p>
<p>Blossom, I’m not criticizing the schools for sending mail. I’m criticizing them for wasting their marketing dollars by sending mail with no relevant content.</p>
<p>I agree with missypie - the letters and emails have little to no relevant information. Most are promoting various online quizzes to help you in the college search process. </p>
<p>I would welcome a letter or brochure with actual info, but these are worthless.</p>
<p>“Green” schools–I wish I could remember the name of the small school in KY that boasted of its “ecological awareness” and its app that was only available online…and then kept sending us mailer after mailer…oh the Trees!</p>
<p>Glossy brochures don’t really say anything, I must point out. We like to look at them to (predictably) see the happy college students, one of each major race, male and female, having a jolly time studying on the front lawn of the oldest building on campus.</p>
<p>D took the PSAT’s during each of her first 3 years of HS. Her scores were very high, but the expected flood was more like a trickle. We didn’t know if she should feel lucky or unwanted.</p>
<p>She received nothing at all from her #1 school (and they are known to send a lot), but they accepted her so in the end it didn’t matter.</p>
<p>Oh. As someone who is privileged enough to be able to full-pay for my kids, I’m not having them look for scholarships because I wouldn’t think it right to seek out scholarships for my kids when that scholarship money could be used to send kids who don’t otherwise have a chance. If one fell into their laps, of course, I wouldn’t have them turn it down, but it’s not something to go seek.</p>
<p>When D first began getting mailings she was excited. After a few days she told me she thought she was getting multiple things from the same school, because she remembered this letter. At that point we were still saving the mail, and we pulled it out and looked. The letters were from multiple schools, but they were all just alike. All offered something “free” that was supposed to give D some type of information. None gave any useful/specific info on the school.</p>
<p>Missypie is right. There is zero information about any of the colleges in these letters, and D found them to be an actual turn-off. She stopped opening any mail in a plain envelope.</p>
<p>So colleges, you’re all worried about your budgets - perhaps you should stop giving money to whatever marketing firm it is that is producing virtually identical, bland letters for dozens of colleges and is turning kids OFF from your school.</p>
<p>Yes and no. They can’t convey anything about the academics, but the pictures say SO much more than the letters. Are they showing off the campus in the snow, or are the kids in shorts and flip flops surrounded by palm trees? Are the pictures showing an urban setting, or can you see corn fields in the background? Does every page brag about sports prowess, or is there a huge picture of an opera production? I think that pictures at least show what the school is proud of or wants to be known for.</p>
<p>S2 starting getting letters in 10th grade, now that the “official” PSATs are out the deluge is upon us, 14 pieces Tuesday, 8 Wednesday and 8 more Thursday. We’re keeping a box in the corner of his room and are going to weigh it at the end of the search, but I’m starting to worry that the weight is affecting the structural integrity of the house.</p>
<p>I think there are two points worth noting about “no useful information”. First, one person’s idea of useful information is someone else’s “worthless marketing”. The point of these mailings is not to recruit our sons or daughters specifically, but to drop a lot of lines in the water and to see if the colleges can get a nibble. If they can make the letters just intriguing enough, maybe a candidate who wouldn’t have considered a particular school will at least stop by the website. </p>
<p>Which brings me to the other point; most students and some parents have strong preconceived notions about what they want from the college experience. A student who’s adamant about wanting “an urban environment, where it’s warm, has a great football team and at least 10,000 students” is going to be put off by a letter that says “We’re a 1,500 student Liberal Arts College located 35 miles from the middle of Cornfields, Iowa”. They’re trying to get you to visit their website so that maybe you’ll at least consider them as an option and not dismiss them before the second sentence of the first paragraph.</p>
<p>Sending out detailed four-color brochures is just too expensive compared to a simple letter and a hopeful visit to the website. Frankly, in this day and age they should be almost exclusively using email; the presentations can be slicker and it would be far cheaper.</p>
<p>One thing that amuses me is how the schools represent their weather. If you just look at pictures in promotional materials or websites, you’d think every school had sunshine all the time. Schools in areas where there’s lots of snow or rain rarely seem to show pictures of a snowy or rainy day. The snowbelt schools can at least show snow on a sunny day :)</p>
<p>My son got an interesting mailing from Florida Institute of Technology. I had requested information (!) on a form on their website where they asked about any interests besides the major. I put in that he was in the Robotics club and might be interested in playing an instrument. They sent a brochure with excellent mail merge mentioning his name in a few places (including the graduation cap at the end) plus information about his potential major, interests and a blurb about a $500 rebate for travel if he enrolled. That was a great use of paper.</p>
<p>My undergrad sent out an e-Christmas card showing the campus in the snow. When I saw my dorm in the snow I thought “now THAT’S how I remember college!” (When I see the pictures of students in shorts relaxing on the quad I think it must be summer school.)</p>
<p>We live in the upper midwest; every year at S2’s school the guidance counselor asks the juniors interested in college to fill out a very basic questionnaire. Every year roughly 80% say they want to go to a school “someplace warm”. I suspect that has a lot to do with pictures of shorts and flip-flops. </p>
<p>FWIW, he also tells the parents that only about 15% actually go “someplace warm”. It’s certainly something that’s on the kids minds, at least here in the frozen north.</p>
<p>Our GC here in New England said the same thing. Every year he hears of all the kids who are going to Florida - except that only a few of them actually do it. And of those who do, inevitably a few transfer back home when they realize that going to college in Florida is not the same as being on vacation in Florida.</p>
<p>We went to Accepted Students day in the POURING rain. An epic nor’easter. And S still loved the campus. I figure if he could love it in that weather, it was indeed the place for him.</p>
<p>“collegeshopping, when you say that the counselor gets requests from colleges all the time for certain types of students, do you mean your school’s GC? I’m wondering if our public school is allowed to release this kind of data. That would explain a lot.”</p>
<p>Yes, exactly. We had to sign a release at the beginning of the year giving the GCO “permission” to submit that type of information. Scholarships can come that way too.</p>
<p>When I was a junior, last year, I got so much college mail from places like Ball State, Renesslear, Bard College, and tons of others. Even if I sent in stuff saying ‘stop sending me information’, they kept on sending me stuff and are still sending me stuff. They just want to know if you are interested and most of the colleges will likely keep sending you stuff even if you don’t respond to anything they send.</p>