<p>Has anyone else been bombarded with letters from random colleges (most of them I haven't heard of)? I've got close to 90 letters since the end of last schools year (sophomore) and until now. I don't ever remember giving out my address to any college website, so I have no idea where I could have gotten these from (not taken ACT/SAT yet). They all are basically advertising their school and asking me to sign up for a visit.</p>
<p>Heres the list:</p>
<p>• Allegheny
• American College
• Arizona
• Augsburg
• Augustana
• Ball State
• Bard
• Bellarmine
• Bethel
• Birmingham-Southern
• Boston University
• Calvin
• Carroll
• Case Western Reserve
• Central
• Coe
• Colorado State
• Concordia
• Creighton
• Denver
• DePaul
• DePauw
• Dickinson
• Dominican
• Drake
• Drexel
• Elmhurst
• Elon
• Evansville
• FIU
• Fordham
• Georgia
• Gettysburg
• Grand Valley State
• Grinnell
• Guilford
• Gustavus
• Hanover
• Hofstra
• Illinois Art Institute
• Illinois College
• Illinois Wesleyan
• Indiana
• Indianapolis
• Iowa
• Iowa State
• Ithaca
• Kansas
• Kenyon
• Knox
• Lewis
• Loyola
• Marquette
• Miami (FL)
• Miami (OH)
• Minnesota
• Missouri
• Monmouth
• Montana
• Montana State
• New York
• NIU
• Northern Arizona
• Ohio Northern
• Purdue
• Redlands
• Rice
• Ripon
• Roanoke
• Saint Ambrose
• Saint Louis
• Saint Michael’s
• Saint Xavier
• Samford
• Santa Clara
• SMU
• South Carolina
• Southern Indiana
• Stetson
• Strayer
• TCU
• Towson
• Tulsa
• Valparaiso
• Vermont
• Washington
• Willamette
• Wittenberg
• Xavier</p>
<p>With some exceptions, I've never heard of these schools</p>
<p>@barrk123 - I guess that could have happened as I did take a practice PSAT. I’m surprised they would send a practice one out. Also I don’t remember giving them permission to send out my information (don’t they need to aks or something?).</p>
<p>be flattered!
p.s. they are not random, they may not be known to people who have only heard of harvard yale princeton…
some of those would be amazing choices!</p>
<p>It is normal to get lots of mail. Schools chasing USNWR rankings want as many applications as they can possibly get, because it increases their “selectivity”, even though it doesn’t improve the college one bit. (One could even argue it detracts from the college, because spending money on marketing that could have been put to academic use.)</p>
<p>Some of these are good schools and are well known. I thought the same thing when these came in the mail, but having researched them, I found some good ones. </p>
<p>If you filled out any info on your PSAT like interests, some schools will match for that.</p>
<p>Some, I just wondered at. We’ve received letters from big name schools with low acceptance rates that have no need to recruit. I did wonder if this was just a way to increase the selectivity, but who knows, maybe they want geographic diversity so they send brochures to areas that they don’t get a lot of applications from. Some of the schools on your list don’t need to recruit either, but they are less well known and may want to get the word out. I don’t consider it something to brag over if a school sends a letter as there may be many reasons for it.</p>
<p>Please recycle. Take them to your school guidance office and leave them out for other students to look at. Read some of them. I was looking at one that would not have been a good choice for my daughter, but a great one for one of her friends. I passed it on.</p>
<p>@hilroy: I got one from a college in Germany, too!</p>
<p>@OP: yes, totally normal. choose to ignore or pursue/peruse as you wish. I plan on planting a tree for replacing the mountains of spam I’ve gotton… 85% of it from schools I’m not applying too.</p>
<p>I think it’s hilarious that you took the time to list the schools that sent you mail! My daughter just hurled her letters/brochures into a box, then sent them straight to the recycling bin after they’d moldered for a while in her closet. </p>
<p>I have no idea how colleges got hername. She took the PSAT sophomore and junior year, but said she did not check the box asking whether she wanted mail, and the letters came anyway. Ironically, she also gets periodic emails from College Board asking why she did not check the college search box!</p>
<p>I guess it really doesn’t matter since you are guaranteed to be inundated with mail, both email and physical, anyway!</p>
<p>wow, schools reaching out to students and so many people seem to be arrogant and condescending about it. take the time to read the mailings, some may be of no interest but, you may discover a gem you never thought about and that could literately change your life. lighten up.</p>
<p>I got a ton of letters from schools when I was applying, too. Some are flattering, some are misleading, and some can be informative if you really are interested in the college. I even got a letter from a school in Italy! </p>
<p>I think most of the letters came from the PSAT, with others coming from a college fair that I attended. </p>
<p>Two of the more sincere letters I received were schools that I never seriously considered before and ended up being the two schools that I chose between before committing!!!</p>
<p>My daughter got a lot of mail too. Still is getting mail (senior in HS). I am amazed at how many phone calls we have received also. Seems like a lot of money is spent. I will admit that it was interesting to how many different colleges there are and we had never heard of them.</p>
<p>Yes it is a waste. But I’ve decided to read the letters because if a school sends me a letter, well I’ll read it. Unfortuantly I’ve had to select all univerisities emails to spam folder. Thanks for everyone’s input and responces.</p>
<p>P.S. I got all these letters by a few a day. The first one I received was from Marquette so I figured I’d keep it. Once I got to 15 I just started a word document and added to it whenever another one came in the mail.</p>
<p>Most mail comes from the Student Search Service, which you opt into when you take the PSAT. I think individual schools purchase contact information for as many students as they wish, scoring in whatever range they wish.</p>
<p>As to the prestige of the mail, I assume if your PSAT score was in range for top caliber schools, you will likely get mail from those schools.</p>
<p>Haha. 90. I’ve got a stack of letters and college spam sitting in my closet that’s probably mad up of 300 pamphlets/letters. My school gives the PSAT to all students, even freshmen, so I’ve been getting them since Sophomore year. </p>
<p>Maybe I’ll have a big bonfire with them and roast some marshmallows with them once this whole process is over lol. Except of course any materials from the college I get into… that would just be bad luck.</p>