<p>Pizzagirl, What do you think Harvard, or any other top ten school is looking for in selecting a student body? I’m fairly certain it is the potential to lead and make outstanding contributions to society in diverse fields. Of course, they know not all their graduates are going to achieve this, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to fill their class with those who have a good chance of doing so. There is nothing wrong with leading “perfectly nice but ordinary upper middle class lives” but you can’t be blind to the fact that Harvard and similar schools are seeking to maximize the number of movers and shakers they produce.</p>
<p>IME, there is little about one’s high school performance that predicts whether one will be a “mover and a shaker.”</p>
<p>Mover, yes; shaker, not so certain.</p>
<p>Wildwood: I see some of your thinking here. Let’s say some portion of your ideas has merit and can be adopted. Should a school like Harvard eschew the traditional methods of marketing altogether (broader direct mailings to students and schools)? Limit travel by its recruitment staff or volunteer alumni? No longer attend college fairs or joint info sessions with other selective schools?</p>
<p>It strikes me that none of what I’ve just listed is too obtrususive but when practiced, they garner the antagonism at the heart of this very long thread. To me, let the market decide. If they blunder and do something over the top, let them catch flak.</p>
<p>Perhaps you’ve heard people’s unhappiness with WUSTL’s constant and massive mailings. I wouldn’t doubt some people have developed negative thoughts about WUSTL b/c of this.</p>
<p>Maybe they should fish where the fish are and restrict visits to New Canaan, Scarsdale, Winnetka, Atherton, etc. Where they know they have plenty of qualified and eager applicants. I mean, it is certainly cost ineffective to send a rep out to, say, Topeka! Let them eat cake. They’ve got KU. Much better state of affairs. The Kansans know their place and the New Canaan-items fill Harvard’s beds as planned. </p>
<p>I think elite schools should do MORE outreach than they do. Not less. B</p>
<p>T26E4, I certainly think informational sessions by recruitment staffs and alums all over the country are helpful. Getting the information out in a general way is a very good thing. I would also love to see more resources going into recruiters out there for non-athlete students who have reached unusual heights in other areas. When I suggest that school officials or community leaders might be informed of an option to propose outstanding candidates, I’m just thinking they might play a role in finding those truly exceptional kids–not that every teacher or homeless shelter director should nominate five, or even one, student every year as a routine. I know these are half-baked ideas but I do think there are alternatives out there for zeroing in on oustanding talent.</p>
<p>As far as mailings go, the problem I have is when super reach schools like Harvard target individual students, many of whom do not have the type of accomplishments that make them a realistic candidate, and do not give clear information as to their chances of admission with hard data. In Harvard’s case, both my Ds received a five-page letter and a paper application. One was a realistic candidate, the other, who was not, was heading in another direction and had no interest. But I was one of the savvy parents (with some time on CC) who understood the process and odds. Many don’t and I was witness to the distortion this can create in the minds of some students and their families.</p>
<p>In any case, it was not my intention on this thread to argue the negative consequences of such broad mailings, just that their use has a purpose, even for the very top schools, in addition to finding undiscovered “diamonds” and providing information --that is to increase applications and maintain low acceptance rates.</p>
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<p>But that’s the point. Except for a few superstar kids, the super reach schools like Harvard DON’T target individuals. They target groups. They blanket an entire mailing list with the mass mailings. Like any mass marketing campaign or junk mail list, there are always many people included who are not interested or for whom the product being advertised does not apply. It’s the nature of a mass mailing. </p>
<p>I think it would be far more accurate to scorn Harvard as a careless or inefficient junk mailer than to scorn it as a manipulative force for Evil bent on tricking as many innocents as possible to apply, so that the school can then gleefully reject each and every one of them, all the while collecting hundreds of dollars in extra app fees, and increasing its World Domination of the cosmically-important admission rate contest.</p>
<p>I agree that more data about applicants’ general (not individual) chances, would be useful. But I suspect that colleges may also be wary of warning kids away too strongly for fear of discouraging the very “diamonds” they are looking for from applying. By definition, the diamonds are students who would be great additions to the campus but who may not have considered the school - believing, for a variety of reasons, that they have no chance.</p>
<p>It really doesn’t matter whether Harvard is operating out of good motives (casting a wide net, looking for diamonds in the rough, being democratic), evil ones (“winning” the make-believe Lowest Admission Rate Bowl), or some mixture thereof (including protecting the Admissions Office’s budget, and promoting the university’s brand). There’s really no responsible argument that getting more applications from qualified students is a bad thing, and Harvard, not Wildwood11 or some committee of College Confidential posters, determines who is qualified.</p>
<p>The idea that there is some “type of accomplishments that makes them realistic candidates” is dead wrong, unless that type is so broad as to be meaningless. Of the 20 or so kids I know who have been accepted at Harvard in the past decade, only one, maybe two, have had the sort of public credentials I think Wildwood11 believes are necessary. The others were simply very smart kids (a couple of whom were also really good at one sport), and not at all easily distinguishable on the basis of their resumes from equally smart kids who were not accepted at Harvard. I would say that they all had something really special about them, but generally you had to know them pretty well to know that, and that still doesn’t distinguish them from some equally special kids that Harvard rejected.</p>
<p>(The other thing I think is dead wrong is the idea that Harvard devotes a lot of resources to athletic scouting and recruitment. It doesn’t. The budget for promoting applications from non-athletes has to swamp utterly whatever budget there is for scouting and recruiting athletes, most of whom fall all over themselves to bring themselves to the attention of Harvard coaches.)</p>
<p>If Harvard is really causing harm to kids and families by creating unrealistic expectations, then it should do something about that. But I don’t see any reason for Harvard – or any Harvard competitor – to start discouraging kids from applying.</p>
<p>Years ago, my kid got an unsolicited app from Princeton. It included a cover letter which said we want to make sure you understand that getting this app doesn’t mean you have what it takes to get into Princeton. It then went on saying something like that of the X thousands of people P’ton was sending this mailing fewer than a dozen would be good enough for Princeton. </p>
<p>My kid thought the letter was thoroughly obnoxious and fit into the stereotype that P’ton was a snobby place. The cover letter eliminated Princeton from consideration. </p>
<p>So, I guess it’s a case that “you’re darned if you do, and darned if you don’t.” I suspect that Princeton was reacting to criticism that sending unsolicited apps raised expectations for the recipient. However, for my kid, the cover letter saying that it’s extremely unlikely you’re good enough for Princeton before my kid had applied pushed an off button.</p>
<p>Jonri, that is an interesting about Princeton, but as obnoxious as you found that cover letter, I would think it serves a worthwhile purpose in dissuading kids who don’t have a serious interest in the school or who really don’t want to bother with the odds. When you say it reinforced a stereotype for your daughter, that sounds like it wouldn’t have been high on her list in any case. I actually think laying out the probabilities is the ethical path to take when advertising to high school students.</p>
<p>JHS, I agree wholeheartedly that Harvard and every private school can do exactly as they see fit to further their own goals and interests, my only point here is that you shouldn’t pretend that they are not taking an active part in the application numbers race. You already acknowledged on a past thread that schools like WUSTL or Northwestern play this game, why have you insisted that HYP doesn’t care about these things that clearly affect their public image?</p>
<p>I know next to nothing about athletic recruiting so I stand corrected if HYP doesn’t put extra resources in finding scholarly athletes for its teams, but if high school coaches and athletes have an option to get themselves noticed, it might be in everyone’s interest to make that option available to stand-outs in other areas.</p>
<p>It’s more important, IMO, to attract and excite kids for whom HYP (or other elite school) wasn’t ever on the radar screen than to worry about the hurt feelings of (mostly affluent) kids who mistake a form letter for a personal invitation.</p>
<p>“There’s really no responsible argument that getting more applications from qualified students is a bad thing…”</p>
<p>It is most definitely a bad thing (though this is less likely to be true for H.) if it makes it less likely that the student accepted and who will attend is less likely to be able to take advantage of the particularities of that specific school. And I think that, at a certain point, that is exactly what happens. </p>
<p>More applications in its own way, simply by the weight of them, can actually make a school less selective by making it less likely that they will accept the student and the student less likely to accept them who is best prepared to take advantage of what the institution has to offer.</p>
<p>“My kid thought the letter was thoroughly obnoxious and fit into the stereotype that P’ton was a snobby place. The cover letter eliminated Princeton from consideration.”</p>
<p>So maybe it was successful in its own way…</p>
<p>“It’s more important, IMO, to attract and excite kids for whom HYP (or other elite school) wasn’t ever on the radar screen than to worry about the hurt feelings of (mostly affluent) kids who mistake a form letter for a personal invitation.”</p>
<p>HYP are among the most famous universities in the world, and would get tens of thousands of applicants without any advertising at all. I’m having a tough time believing they couldn’t find plenty of diamonds in the rough by merely sifting through the mountains of applications they get from their pre-early admissions advertising efforts. The post-early-admissions ad blitz is is superfluous and reeks of stats-padding. Sort of like George Clooney floating the idea that every gal in the country whose waist is smaller than her hips should drop him an email. Rich girls have feelings too.</p>
<p>I suspect that some of this marketing by Columbia etc results from having the name of a prospective applicant on a mailing list due to a student previously either visiting, writing, or e-mailing the school. </p>
<p>Having said that, I think some schools like Chicago are definitely increasing their marketing efforts to bolster their rankings. In the last three years after Chicago went to the common app, its applications have skyrocketed with a corresponding decrease in admission rates. This has likely been a key factor in its increase in the USNWR rankings from 9 to 5. What other factor at Chicago has changed in the last few years and, indeed, if anything the school now provides a slightly less satisfactory experience for its new students due to the over crowding issues the last few years there. </p>
<p>[U</a>. of C. sees unprecedented jump in applications - Chicago Breaking News](<a href=“http://archive.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/01/university-of-chicago-applications-u-of-c-attendance.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+ChicagoBreakingNews+%2528Chicago+Breaking+News%2529]U”>http://archive.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/01/university-of-chicago-applications-u-of-c-attendance.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+ChicagoBreakingNews+%2528Chicago+Breaking+News%2529)</p>
<p>[Record</a> Number Of Applicants At U Of C, NU CBS Chicago](<a href=“http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/01/12/record-number-of-applicants-at-u-of-c-nu/]Record”>Record Number Of Applicants At U Of C, NU - CBS Chicago)</p>
<p>D received big information packet / viewbook etc from UVA in the mail yesterday . . . deadline today. Not ivy, I know, but certainly a late arriving packet from quality school. Also a large packet from USC last week.</p>
<p>The main factor in Chicago’s move from nine to five was a five-way tie for fifth place. There’s no difference between #5 and #9.</p>
<p>USC is due on 10th. so there is still time. Their scholarship deadline passed on dec 1st.</p>
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<p>Yes. They will get those applicants from the usual suspects and sources – from elite boarding schools, from affluent upper middle class suburban areas, from magnet schools, and from the eastern seaboard and California. To JHS’ analogy about American Idol – yes, they can find plenty of diamonds there, and plenty of diamonds in the rough, too. But just like AI goes to a bunch of different cities versus just NYC and LA, they need to do the same. Every year, there is a kid or two on CC who says, “I had no idea that these places were for people like me – no one around me ever mentioned them and they might as well have been on Mars – but I got a mailing / saw a rep, investigated further, and now here I am.” I think that’s inspirational, and it’s also worth the hurt feelings of a few kids in New Canaan who mistake bulk mail for personalized invitations.</p>
<p>Just out of curiosity, everyone reading this, try this experiment. Go to someone working in an everyday retail type of job - not at a department store where they might be part of a management training program, but just someone who is working at a drycleaner, at a Hallmark store, at a Radio Shack, etc. Ask them what are the best universities in the country. See what they say. And then think about if they were diamonds in the rough, what would they know.</p>
<p>I did this just yesterday at a Radio Shack (suburban Chicago). I told the clerk I was doing a marketing survey and wanted to know what he thought the best universities in the country were. He came up with MIT and Harvard and was <em>completely</em> stumped. Couldn’t think of anything more. I asked if he’d ever heard of Yale or Princeton. Yes, vaguely. I didn’t even see the point of mentioning a Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth or Penn. I then asked if he knew what universities in the Chicago area were good. He’d heard of U of Chicago and thought “DePaul was pretty good, too.” After a while, he also came up with Northwestern but he wasn’t sure if it was as good as DePaul. This wasn’t the sticks. This was suburban Chicago. Now, think of this guy’s classmates, or maybe he has a sister who’s a genius. Remind me again why we assume they’d all know the lists of top colleges?? I think everyone on CC far exaggerates the extent that “the top colleges” pierces the consciousness of the everyday person. Which is fine for the everyday person who has no need to know these things - but not so fine for their diamond-in-the-rough sisters.</p>
<p>^ This. Heck, you can even run the experiment with fellow parents and discover plenty who are surprisingly uneducated about schools beyond those on their own senior’s list. Or poll colleagues and friends who haven’t lived in another region or went to college years ago, as I did, when a number of now-top schools weren’t really on the national radar.</p>
<p>Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Harvey Mudd {insert well-regarded LAC of your choice)–never heard of it! Wesleyan–isn’t that all women? Northwestern–is that in Seattle or Portland? WUSTL–is that a branch of the U of Washington? U Chicago and NYU–it’s so cold and far away, for a big city public, why not just go to local city U?</p>