<p>The price of first class US postage will increase by 2 cents, to 39 cents, on January 8th. The rate for a postcard will increase by 1 cent, to 24 cents. Priority mail goes from $3.85 to $4.05</p>
<p>Make sure that any preaddressed stamped envelopes you or your kids have submitted to anyone -- such as envelopes given to school teachers or the school guidance counselor to mail out recommendations or the midyear report, or confirmation postcards enclosed with your apps - have the right amount of postage.</p>
<p>[I know that most people are already aware of this, but this is an easy thing to forget with all the other stress of meeting college deadlines. I wouldn't have remembered if the clerk at the post office hadn't mentioned it to me last week. I promptly purchased a sheet of 20 2-cent stamps and gave them to my daughter. Last thing we need is a college application or important financial aid documents being returned for insufficient postage.]</p>
<p>As long as we are at it, if you are mailing an application, double check to make sure that the deadline for each college is a postmark-by date as opposed to a receive-by date. Apparently some colleges have different practices in that area.</p>
<p>good lord! can you imagine? (I can!) I can just see a college with a "postmark-by date" rule, but they don't receive the application until after decisions have been mailed out because it was kicked back and forth for 3 months looking for postage due.</p>
<p>Well I think the more likely scenario is that the envelope arrives at the college with postage due, and the college pays it -- since many of those envelopes will have $70 application fee checks inside of them, I think the college can afford to come up with 2 cents if needed.</p>
<p>But I felt it was worth noting the postage increase, just to avoid added anxiety when you realize too late that you sent something without adequate postage.</p>
<p>so how many threads like this one will ther be in the college forums??
(In this case apparently there was not enough postage on the envelopes even under the old rates)</p>
<p>Exactly, which is why I posted.... but I do think that the issue is really more of anxiety than a likelihood of mail going undelivered. </p>
<p>I used to work at a business that had a lot of incoming mail from catalog sales, and every day the postal carrier would show up with a bundle of postage-due mail, give us the total owed, and the office staff would pay whatever was called for out of petty cash. It was just considered a normal cost of doing business to pay between $5-$20 every day to make up for missing postage. </p>
<p>Then again, I bet there are kids who will stress out worrying about whether their "chances" will be hurt because the college had to pay 2 cents in order to accept the mail.</p>
<p>There is no guarantee that colleges will automatically pay postage due. Just imagine all of the mail (not just undergraduate applications) that a college receives on a daily basis.</p>
<p>There is also no guarantee that every post office mail processing center in the U.S. will even process mail with postage due. Postal workers in one city may send mail through while others in another city may return mail to the original sender.</p>
<p>As far as CCers stressing out over postage due and their "chances," well you already know how they are. CCers stress over whether to inhale or exhale!</p>
<p>I've actually already played out this scenario this year. A student gave me a stamped envelope for my rec letter to his EA school. I mailed it pretty close to the EA deadline, not noticing that the stamp was left over from prior to the last postage increase. The envelope was returned to me the next day and I re-stamped and re-sent. I do not believe that the post office tries to delivers things poastage-due anymore, so I don't think colleges are going to be asked to pay the 2 cents.</p>