<p>The highly selective universities usually don't send much mail. They really don't have to.</p>
<p>Yea I'm sure that's why Harvard spends billions on marketing.</p>
<p>PSAT scores and colleges that sent me stuff...</p>
<p>167 last year...</p>
<p>University of Miami
University of Denver
University of Chicago
NYU
Whittier College
Whitman College
Whitworth College
Bentley College
Seattle University
Pepperdine University</p>
<p>216 this year...</p>
<p>University of Chicago (again)
University of Michigan
University of Miami (again)
NYU (again)
Columbia University
Williams College
Swarthmore College
Bentley College (again)
American University
University of Delaware
McCalester College
Carleton College (email)
WUStL
Gonzaga University
Seattle University (again)
University of Puget Sound
Pitzer College
Northwestern
Grinnell College
Pepperdine (again)
Lehigh
Tufts
Washington and Lee (email)
TX A&M Honors Program
UVA
CalTech
Humboldt State Univ.
Occidental College
oh yeah, and West Point (what the hell? Mind you, I'm not even a US permanent resident yet)</p>
<p>Ivies and top LAC's to unknown places....seriously, it's piling up and I'm dying in it. I sent off 23 envelopes in the past two days. So to answer your question, yes, everyone's getting mail from highly selective colleges. (mind you I have a 3.6ish GPA and don't stand a chance at places like CalTech or Columbia...</p>
<p>See, there's an upside to the flood of stuff you are getting now. At the end of your senior year (like I'm planning to do), you gather up all the college stuff that you've accumulated over the past few months except for the school you got into and you have a huge bon fire with some friends who bring theirs too. </p>
<p>This requires you to save all your stuff tho, but I imagine this will be quite entertaining...</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>Yeah, The selective ones like the one I got from Stanford was kind of cool even if it is worth as much as a German Mark in 1945. Of course you have to love the lame schools you don't ever want to go to that send you spam.</p>
<p>You'll get them from HPYS etc later, if your SAT scores are high. I am saying this because that is what happened to my son, who is NMF (PSAT-based). I really do not remember him getting stuff from HPYS at first.</p>
<p>Everytime one of those college emails come in, I star it (gmail). Now I have more mail in my starred folder than in my spam folder. They send me on average 4-5 per day.</p>
<p>I just remembered my son started getting college mail as a sophomore after taking just one AP exam and getting a 5 on it (computer science.)</p>
<p>"The highly selective universities usually don't send much mail. They really don't have to."</p>
<p>Actually, they do send mail. Though my D is only a soph, she has received mail from several ivies and top LACs, including Brown, UPenn, Columbia, Swarthmore, Williams, UChicago, and a host of other great schools. She has not received anything from HYPS, though. She's sending back the reply card for those schools she's interested in.</p>
<p>Yeah, highly selective universities do send mail. I've received about 30 e-mails and 5 fat envelopes from Columbia's Fu Foundation School of Engineering alone since freshman year. I get some stuff from Brown and West Point Academy once in a while.</p>
<p>When I took the PSAT and SAT, I did not fill out the extra information, so schools should not have been sunding me mail. Yet, I did get Kenyon and Carnegie Mellon info, along with stuff from tons of smaller, lesser-known schools.</p>
<p>Yeah, everyone gets this mail.</p>
<p>I got mail from UofM, but that's probably just because my parents are alum and they have donated a lot to the engineering department and my aunt works at the office of admissions.</p>
<p>I think there is a correlation,many of the colleges mention the PSAT score in their letters..</p>
<p>I think they buy information up to a certain percentile from the PSAT scores. I scored in the 90th and have received letters from most of the top 50 schools. But then again, some of the letters have mentioned my class rank and GPA. It's all confusing but anyway the real point is, unless they're offering you money, or an admissions advantage....its just an advertisement.</p>
<p>But on that note, it is nice to get mail from the top schools.</p>
<p>Harvard in no way sends to only minorities. Many of my upper-class white friends received mail from Harvard</p>
<p>Yes, but I think that HYPS don't send out much until later. My son (white) got invitations to presentations by the schools in our city during his junior year. He was mailed applications by them during his senior year also. He also received applications from schools he had never showed any interest in, such as Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, Amherst, Williams, etc. </p>
<p>The main point as I see it is that you are a possible admit by the numbers, but so are many of their applicants. There is much more involved than SAT scores and grades.</p>
<p>My soph. son has been getting piles of mail for the past few weeks (His 10th grade PSAT was about 206, I believe...). Funny thing-- his handwriting stinks and they translated his email address incorrectly. Luckily he was able to merely create that email address so all the college email goes there. We'll be able to see what other emails he receives at that address. It'll be interesting. I wonder who gets their hands on that mailing list....</p>
<p>And Murasaki- your scores are pretty decent, and you are from Arkansas.. A BIG plus for you. Most schools want to have students from as many states as possible. It's times like this that I wish we lived in North Dakota (well not right now.. too cold!)</p>
<p>Oh, thank you.</p>
<p>Selective colleges, like HYPS do send mail. I got a packet from Yale. Anything from an Ivy/Stanford/MIT I consider false hope. For me, anywayz. A lot prospective students on this board have wonderful stats.</p>
<p>As a senior, I can tell you guys that these letters mean absolutely NOTHING. You say Harvard doesn't send out letters? They recruit and advertise more than any school in the country. </p>
<p>Do they WANT all the students they send letters too? Absolutely! They want them to APPLY. To these colleges, they know they'll get those 2,000 applicants that they will eventually admit, what they're interested in is having 20,000 applicants to choose from, regardless of how high quality the bottom 5,000 or so are. </p>
<p>Please, do not put any thought into these letters, they're a waste of your time. The colleges that do send you mail that you should consider are those that give significant aid to national merit scholars. After I was named a Seminfinalist and a Finalist my senior year, I received mail offering me full scholarships, special honors college programs, etc. These may be very useful to some of you.</p>
<p>But seriously, don't waste your sophomore year reading these damn letters. They're useless.</p>
<p>"Please, do not put any thought into these letters, they're a waste of your time. "</p>
<p>Actually, it depends. If you are a top-scoring URM, or top-scoring individual from a low-income urban or rural area, I would think it would be in your best interest to take letters from ivies very seriously. On a percentage basis, there are probably not a whole lot of URMS or very low-income students scoring above 90th perecentile on the PSAT. So if you happen to be one of those few who do, and also have top grades, it makes every bit of sense to followup up on letters from top colleges. Certainly it won't hurt to start showing interest very early in the admissions process.</p>