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Well, you obviously haven't worked at many. But it is an easily testable hypothesis, and you can test it for yourself: put you name into an inquiry database at a couple of colleges, using a different middle initial, and watch your mail.
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Colleges do "blind inquiry" projects (signing up for peer institutions' mailing lists) all the time to keep tabs on others' marketing efforts. Submitting your name on a college's website won't get you on the lists for those "college bound" type magazines with the ads in them or Who's Who mailings.</p>
<p>The source of many of our mailing lists is the College Board's Student</a> Search Service. The colleges buy names from the CB and we don't share them (unless we're doing some group travel and one school is handling the mailings for all). The CB allows some non-school groups to buy names from them.</p>
<p>In addition, using certain college/aid search websites can lead to the spread of your information. There are also mailing list companies like American</a> Student List that gather information from a number of sources. Do a Google search for "mailing lists" and "college bound". You may be surprised by the results.</p>
<p>Colleges are obviously a big source of junk mail, but they aren't the sole source.</p>