<p>Ok my stats are not through the roof but I am in a school where I am a standout and my SAT score was in the top 15 of my class of 160. Thing that is weird is I have gotten relatively light mail from the various colleges where my less accomplished for lack of a better word counterparts are getting hordes of mail! How do colleges get these name/addresses? I am not as far as I know am on any mailing lists, and perhaps they are....I don't know. Its just strange, my two closest friends who I love dearly but will by their own admission be lucky to get into our local state school have gotten so much mail, compared to my very light load. I am not terribly bothered because I know in the end its all about your stats that you have to stand on, but just curious if anyone knows how this really works? Thanks!</p>
<p>Have you indicated on the SAT student service thing that you wanted colleges to know about you, and that the collegeboard could distribute your info to colleges that were interested?</p>
<p>Eh, I got like the 3rd highest SAT score in my high school and I got almost no mail either. I don't remember whether I did that thing aabbcc just talked about though.</p>
<p>Yeah, most of my mail (if not all) comes from taking collegeboard tests- the PSAT, SAT, and (maybe) AP tests. Marking a "yes" to the SAT student service gives you a lot of mail if you score relatively well.</p>
<p>If you didn't mark yes ( even if you get a perfect score), then the college board can't distribute your scores to other colleges, and as a result, colleges won't send you mail.</p>
<p>My son didn't get any mail while his friends were getting buried in it. Later he figured out that bubbled in 'no' to the share-your-information question. It's worked out better anyway. He did his own research and specifically requested information from schools he was interested in. That has come -- in great abundance. ;-)</p>
<p>Also, it depends on what your intended major is.
I got a lot of mail from tech schools and eng. heavy schools for that specific reason (and from a bunch of lac's who couldn't get the hint that since I want to major in engineering, I couldn't care less about their programs).</p>