<p>My question is whether there is any point in trying to deduce anything from the college mail that continues to pour in. My DS is not interested in the vast majority of the colleges, but I, as a practical mother, am wondering if the repeated mailings would indicate that there would be a possibility of merit aid and admittance to honors programs. Most of the repeated mailers are safety schools for him. In some cases, the colleges seem to be a good match in areas other than scores and GPAs, and in other cases, not a good match. Should we be considering these colleges more closely or just ignore the mail? Is there anything we can extrapolate from the mailing patterns of the colleges?</p>
<p>For selective schools, no. For less selective schools, some of them definitely buy lists from college board of high scorers and bombard them with mail. I was a National Merit Semifinalist/Finalist and the worst offenders as far as mailings were probably Texas A & M, UT-Dallas, and the University of Florida, which actually continued to encourage me to apply past May 1st of my senior year ("It's not too late!"). These letters especially would offer a deal--this much of a scholarship, this fancy dorm complex, such and such special honors program. Presumably had I applied I would have been offered those perks, but none of the schools appealed and I wasn't in particular need of merit money, so I never tested the assumption.</p>
<p>Edit: Selective schools also buy lists, I think. But the fact that they send you materials isn't indicative of anything besides the fact that you may have scored well on a standardized tests.</p>
<p>I second advantagious. I was in the exact same situation this year (Texas A&M was a biggie, as well as Ole Miss... now they were bad).
However, to be honest I might not have applied to the school I'm about to attend if it wasn't for all the mail I got from them- WUSTL (surprisingly I didn't get as much mail from them as everyone complains about on here compared to a school like Ole Miss).
I can't imagine what I'd be doing now if it wasn't prepping to move to St. Louis in less than two weeks.</p>
<p>I don't think you can deduce anything from it but I will say, my husband nearly cried the day D got something from MIT. Not that she wants to go there.</p>
<p>I wouldn't say that the mail means anything in terms of merit money.</p>
<p>Mail means only that they want you to apply. For many schools, this is just a marketing tool to increase their applicant pool in hopes thay can gin up their selectgivity ranking and therevy their US News ranking. If you get mail from MIT, it doesn't mean you're a likely admit. I would read absolutely nothing into it. But if a school catches your eye with some unique feature or program you might not otherwise have naticed, don't be shy about investigating further. Because of imperfect information, it's an imperfect market. Anything that increases the information flow improves the efficiency of the market.</p>
<p>One bit of advice- make sure everything gets opened if it's a school you're even remotely interested in. We've gotten several letters that have included information on the availability of travel money to see the school and fee waivers. So even if it looks like the same thing from the same school for the tenth time- it may not be.</p>
<p>S2 got tons of mail from Univ. of Kentucky. S2 is a very average student (def. not one who would increse their averages) and we don't live in Kentucky or a nearby state. I figured they were just fishing for more app. dollars.</p>