<p>Two interesting things happened to a couple of kids at my school within the last two weeks. One who had been rejected from Miami of Ohio got a call from admissions who told him he is now accepted. (His mother is native American). The second boy got an application completely filled out(including his social security number-that freaked his mom out) from Johns Hopkins asking him to send his test scores and they would like to have him come to school there. He is Latino.</p>
<p>Are the schools now trying to balance their minority ratios or what? Has anyone else heard of anything like this?</p>
<p>This is quite interesting..I have not heard of anything like that though. Even if a school like Hopkins wanted more hispanics I doubt they would have to go "fishing" for them as I am sure quite a lot apply already. Maybe they got info from the PSAT survey stuff.</p>
<p>In the first case, it sounds as if one of the adcoms was very interested in the case, lost the first round, and then was able to convince the admissions director later to accept him/her. If he/she is accepted now, then he/she is accepted. Congratuations.</p>
<p>In the second case, that does seem weird. I would still not think that it is a guaranteed acceptance. It might must be some kind of new mind-twisting kind of spam in order to increase the number of applications.</p>
<p>In the case of Miami of Ohio, someone could probably call the school and talk to them about it if they wanted to. After April, people sometimes call the adcoms to ask why they were denied, and they get the usual response of "Well, the applicant pool was very competitive year and ...". This is an unusual case though and the caller could describe the two letters and probably talk to somebody.</p>
<p>The same goes about the letter from Hopkins.</p>
<p>At Hopkins, it is more like Spetsnaz Op stated, as schools purchase list from the college board of students who fall with in a certain PSAT range. Anyone who the school believes is a viable candidate based on test scores, they will send a letter/ information encouraging them to apply. At the end of the day it is all marketing.</p>
<p>With the Miami University situation I agree with Dufus, as it is not unusal for a GC to contact a school to find out why a student was rejected/waitlisted in the process (remember a good part of admissions is based on relationships, that is why we tell students not to screw over you GC by backing out of ED admissions). </p>
<p>The GC is may have been able to offer the school piece of information that was not in the application that warrented the committee to give the student a second look. I do not think what happened in this situation was necessarily a "minority thing" as much as it was the work of a good GC who knows their students and are willing to go to bat for them. A good GC will just do it as part of the job .</p>
<p>I think that you got some pretty valid explanations but they do not seem to be acceptable to you. </p>
<p>Is there more to the story? </p>
<p>Do you think the JHY should have written you a letter inviting you to apply?</p>
<p>Did U miami at ohio reject you and the GC did not call for you?</p>
<p>Sometimes people just want to make something out of nothing, because maybe some things are just what they are with no ulterior motives </p>
<p>Tell us what you want to hear and maybe some one will say yeah, I think that too.</p>
<p>If true, the OP's stories don't surprise me at all.</p>
<p>Actually, after thinking about it more, I would say that the JHU letter is definitely marketing material done in extremely poor taste. It was very crude of them to put the SSN on the form. It can't have been the complete form, and so if you mail it back, they would send you the full application to be completed. It is also reprehensible because it gives the impression that the applicant is guaranteed a spot, when they certainly would not be.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with the first story, though. They just changed their mind after the denial letter went out.</p>