I hate reading these things because it depresses me. My kid has great grades, good ACTs. Sure, we get some college mail, two or three pieces a week, but nowhere near what you guys are reporting. Mostly from local colleges or for profit colleges, or colleges where we have visited and signed up for mailing lists. Nothing all that personalized.
I suspect that the difference is that I live in a different demographic zone than you guys. Most of the kids around here end up in trade school or community college. My kid isn’t being wooed.
What I had to laugh at was the Princeton and Cornell mail in February. Um, if they haven’t applied or gotten ready to apply, Princeton is not a college you apply to “on a whim”
@ninakatarina My guess is your student checked the box not wanting the mail. Colleges often actively seek those from areas like you describe if they have good stats. It’s a bit of a hook for many. (I work in such an area and if the kids are competitive stat-wise, they get decent financial offers from some of these schools. That said, not many students are competitive stat-wise…)
I agree with post #11. Colleges are businesses. If they can get more people to apply, they’re happy! It’s a good chance to educate kids about the real world. You have to be vigilant all the time.
@milee30 Personalized letters that seem to recruit a student may be a first world problem to you, but please remember there are families that will make too much for waivers but really can’t afford to be tossing away $100 on an application. In most cases this is exactly what you are doing when you apply to an elite college as they deny 90-80% of applicants. You may think it’s junk and throw it all away, but many people do not see it that way. As much as I found the Stanford letters an entertaining read, we were never going to apply. I don’t think these colleges care about casting a wide net, they are just making money off of the uninformed.
Let it go. It’s marketing, plain and simple. Just toss in the trash and move on.
My kid got at least a dozen letters like that from Wash U St. Louis…and let’s just say, my kid would not have been accepted there. We laughed about it. I told DD, she should submit a paper application and include all the nice letters…and a cover letter that said “as you can see from your mailings, I am the perfect applicant to your college. Enclosed is my application.”
After the first kid, I told my kids not to check the box and the other two didn’t get any mail. Then we were free to just get info from websites and visits.
That said, some of these mailings are to affect rankings, but also some of the top schools are making a genuine effort to reach out to kids who would not ordinarly consider applying, particularly those from low income families. It is a fine line between marketing and outreach! And to the OP maybe your kid should consider it too.
Small point but I cannot resist as the parent of a kid with celiac: milee30 not everyone who avoids gluten is following a fad, those with celiac get really really sick even from microscopic amounts of gluten, and colleges have to accommodate them according to the Americans with Disabilities Act
My kid never checked the box…and started to receive mailings from Wash U at the end of 8th grade…LONG before she ever took any standardized test like the ACT or SAT.
We never figured out why…but we did learn quickly how to toss the junk mail…in the trash.
Count me in the small group who believes these letters are significant. I have two kids – 2 grades apart. Both are about equally bright (in my mind) but one is a high-stat kid…she really knows how to nail a test (standardized or otherwise). Both kids got mailings from Wash U & UChicago (I’d love to see their mailing costs) but only high-stat kid got the mailings from princeton/harvard/georgetown (and many more). Now here’s a funny aside…regular-stat kid DID get a mailing from Cornell…but instead of laughing it off as a meaningless mailing, he applied. And got in.
It’s kind of like opening a magazine you subscribe to and seeing a flashy, seductive ad for a sleek 700 horsepower, 200 mph sports car you can’t possibly afford. No reason to get upset. Just glance at the ad for a nanosecond and turn the page. It doesn’t really apply to you; you just got caught in their marketing net.
Early on I asked…ok which box was not checked. I agree some are schools I had never heard and looked interesting. I did take the time to research them. The one I really love is the school that keeps sending me mail and emails for my older child already in college!
Haha, love this post! My son’s PSAT was 1400, nothing spectacular. He has received mailers from almost every top school in the country. He knows he isn’t getting into any of them, and luckily isn’t interested. He is currently being beseiged by emails from Brown. He is considering applying, only because it was his sister’s dream school (she was denied) and he knows how much it would irk her if he applied. Not sure the application fee is worth annoying his sister though.
He also got two very expensive, gold-embossed invitations to the National Leadership Council, and some other similar one. He was very flattered that they felt his leadership qualities (none- well, he did make a club with a friend last week), qualified him to spend $3000 at their exclusive summer programs.
Can the college board even send your sophomore’s psat scores to these colleges? How do they know anything about my kid other than she took the PSAT on October of sophomore year and took APHUG last spring? They didn’t get AP score either, I assume.
We are having the opposite experience. My D opted out for the mailings and she received exactly zero mailings. Then she showed interest in a few colleges and she received maybe 2 cards and a brochure from each in a span of a year. I think a private university that usually sends tons of stuff mailed her exactly zero in print only sent some emails. She is currently accepted to several of those schools (a mix of privates, in states and oos) and have received only a couple of cards inviting her to the accepted student days. Not complaining!
Way back in the 70s I responded to that ad in the back of Seventeen magazine where artistic types were challenged to “draw Spunky”. A few weeks later I got a call from the organization, and the man told me I had talent and was eligible to attend their “institute”. I replied, “um, thanks … I’m 12 … I don’t think my mom will let me.”
I’ve said to my DH that the college mail our D has have received in the past year or so (including University of Chicago, WUSL, and Tulane) reminds me of the “draw Spunky” school solicitations!
I just want to point out that according to its common data set, 25% of entering freshman at Princeton who submit ACT scores have scores of 32 or below, and of that cohort, almost 10% have scores of 29% or below.
So any kid with a 33 is solidly within Princeton’s midrange for admissions and certainly makes sense from a marketing perspective. If that is the info Princeton is relying on; the OP didn’t mention the daughter’s PSAT scores, and those are often the source of the data used for marketing.
The OP may be correct in perceiving the daughter as unlikely to qualify for Ivy admission, but the selection process is more than just GPA and test scores, and a kid doesn’t have to have cured cancer either. The Ivies are looking for kids who do stand out in some significant way, but not necessarily in some unattainable way.
If you don’t want any more mail, contact the school and request removal from the mailing list.
I felt the same way when we received the beautiful glossy from Vanderbilt. I truly believe it is a fundraising drive at $80 per application fee and an effort to keep their application numbers up so that their acceptance rate remains super low. Imagine if they got less applicants and their acceptance rate when up? Gasp! I think there are many out there who don’t understand how this game works and will bite on applying to schools that although their stats are wonderful, they won’t get in.
As some people have noted, make sure that your child doesn’t check off any box anywhere that asks if they would like to receive stuff from colleges. You will be on mailing lists forever. My D was pretty savvy about this - we didn’t get swamped with stuff except here and there from obscure schools that she would never consider applying to. University of Chicago was one of those she did apply to that did send us a couple of things - wound up on the wait list, but pulled herself off when she accepted to Cal.
