<p>Do invitations to visit/apply mean anything?</p>
<p>Unsolicited? It means that your PSAT scores have put you on their radar and that you show potential enough to be a possible candidate for admission, nothing more.</p>
<p>It means zip. My daughter threw away the letter from Yale or Harvard, I can’t remember which. She is not that gullible.</p>
<p>You’ll get tons of solicitations: emails, brochures, etc. I mean hundreds. All is simple marketing.</p>
<p>If you’re in a particularly coveted sub-group, it’s possible you might get an invite for a paid campus visit. These are rare but it means you’re definitely on someone’s radar.</p>
<p>A day hasn’t gone by where I don’t get some college invite/apply or whatever. Nothing big. Even though one college was crazy enough to mix up their acceptances and interest lists and I got an acceptance letter lol. Then I got a letter explaining the mistake and said they would offer me a scholarship. Whatevers</p>
<p>To echo the other posters, it just means that colleges want someone in your PSAT range with your characteristics to apply. If it’s free and you’re at all interested in the school, I’d go for it. Very often the schools that send you a free application will thow merit money at you after being accepted. That, or they just want to reject a lot of people and boost their percieved selectivity (ex: WUSL)</p>
<p>I think for schools that have admitted rate less than 10%, they should not have to do this marketing anymore.</p>
<p>There are still quite a few regions of the country where students don’t consider HYPS. At my school, plenty of people thought that privates are almost always unaffordable because they only looked at the sticker price. Thus they didn’t apply to those schools. Sure the schools are well known by almost everyone in the country, but most people who are qualified to enter the admissions lottery choose not to, because they either don’t consider it, or think them far too expensive.</p>
<p>ZombieDante -</p>
<p>I also got that! I got an acceptance letter and then they sent another letter saying ignore that but I get a $1,500 / year scholarship if I apply… It was to some horrible school though</p>
<p>whenhen,
I know a lot of students in California only apply to the UCs because they think private schools are out of reach financially. But I think these letters give students false hope somehow.</p>
<p>Back in the '70s, I did read it all and collected it in two large paper grocery bags. I’m sure that now the total volume would come to much more than that, and students could spend almost every waking minute just to read through it. However, in those bags of mailings was one slim note from a place I’d never heard of, but that turned out to be perfect for me, and that yielded the bachelor’s diploma that hangs over my computer desk. </p>
<p>Be realistic about what you can afford, and where your grades and exam scores are likely to get you in, and if you find something promising in that heap of mail (or jamming your in-box) that looks good to you, do some further investigation. It may work for you. Just don’t expect every last piece of paper (or email) to be truly meaningful.</p>
<p>Usually means that your SAT or ACT scores are in the “ball park” for them & that is where they got your info.</p>
<p>But I thought that PSAT/SAT scores are kept private? And the collegeboard doesn’t share them???</p>
<p>There’s a box to check if you want to release them or not. If you do, scores by range are sold to marketing companies who represent universities and send out all the postcards and emails your students get.</p>
<p>Gotcha… I was wondering about that b/c dd14 has been receiving so much mail… a whole forest of trees worth!!</p>