What is the most ridiculous piece of mail that you child received from a college? Until last week it was between the poster tube from CWRU or the ~90 page book from Yale. But last week my DS received a box from Wabash College. In the box was a card holder for a cell phone, lip balm, a car air freshener, and an pair of SOCKS. I guess to some extent it worked. I got me to google the school and post the name here. What others are out there?
D1 originally thought of studying law, but on her psat, wrote legal studies, a completely different kettle of fish. So, she started getting mail from every no-name pre-professional school out there. Cosmetology, stewardess ‘college,’ trade techs, plus a bunch of “we’ll accept you if you’re breathing and can pay our costs” types of ‘colleges.’
My daughter got accepted to Ohio Wesleyan with a scholarship. One problem was that she never applied… Lol.
This was her very first acceptance and was laughing telling me "at least I know I am going somewhere… Lol.
The stylized, personalized postcard for my DS17 from UChicago had the wrong name on it. They send out postcards with the student’s 1st name printed large in stylized letters, and the name WAS a more or less standard boy’s name, but it had one letter different than DS’ name, which made it a totally different name. Everyone he showed it to thought it would be a great name for him, but it just WASN’T him. ?
U Chicago’s personalized poster was over the top especially after all the weekly mail and other crap they sent.
Other stand outs - a 3D puzzle and a stack of personalized business cards. I think the puzzle was from Notre Dame but am blanking now on who sent the business cards.
More junk clogging up landfills.
I was coming to say the personalized UChicago stuff and the Notre Dame card puzzle. LOL. We filled multiple plastic bins with all that garbage. I think I’m going to tell my younger not to check yes on the ACT.
A few years back, U Chicago sent a brochure type marketing mailing written by students with all the things a student could do at U Chicago… it said in poetry something to the effect of, a boy could meet a girl and fall in love here and a girl can meet a boy and fall in love… my son is gay so we x’ed the school off of our list immediately. If they were that obtuse in mass marketing it would be a long 4 years son said.
My daughter received a personal birthday card from a random student at a school she didn’t apply to. Creepy.
Tell your kids to not check the box.
I know this and other threads all ridicure and chastisize U of Chicago’s uncanny advertising techniquies. However, the flip side of the coin is that those advertise DO work. D had not heard of U Chicago before when she applied for colleges in 2010 and because the advertising, she got to know U Chicago and got in. She had her happy 4 years there and now she is a doctor(even she is only PGY1, she will be a fully board certified physician in another 4 years). When she started U Chicago, the admission rate was around 14%, now it is a super hard school to get in, the advertising did its job.
I think we should look beyond the advertising from the school, if the school is good, a little bit overdone on advertising dosen’t hurt.
Agree with the CWRU tube. At least we knew an alum that was happy to have the poster!
+1 on the effectiveness of the University of Chicago mailings, which had a lot of effect on my children. It’s not that they didn’t know what Chicago was from their parents, but at least in that era (which was a while ago) the mailings did a good job of communicating what was special about Chicago and its students in a substantive way.
The piece described by runswimyoga above certainly did not do a good job of communicating what Chicago is about, however. My kids had any number of gay and queer friends there. It was a great environment for intellectual students who were something other than standard-issue heterosexual. They can fall in love there, too. The longest-running couple among any of my kids’ friends is a pair of men who met their first month at Chicago.
After my S17 checked the box I’m pretty sure my S19 twins did not check the box. We still were inundated and with duplicates of everything. Between just the three of them the material more than filled 2 file type boxes. So many dead trees. . .
We moved right before D’s sophomore year of high school (still in the same area, just moved to a neighboring town and 10 mins closer to school!) and D received a brochure from University of San Diego (I’m almost certain that was the school, might have to check with D if she remembers for sure) addressed to the child of the previous owner! Amazing how not all the mail gets forwarded. I’d say it’s unusual in that it wasn’t even intended for my kid…
Fast forward a couple of years and we toured Uni. of San Diego with D and she applied and got in, though didn’t attend. Never got a brochure in the mail from them though…but we did get several from the info session when we visited!
Rennselaer sent my D21 a personalized poster. She liked it. It made her take a second look at a school she never heard of before.
Some of the stuff my kids received in the mail from schools we’ve kept, for instance pens, keychains, etc…
Other stuff we threw away or sent to goodwill! Most of it was from schools my kids had no interest in! I would say we mostly got brochures!
Other things I remember my kids receiving from various schools (don’t always remember from which school, may have to ask my kids if they remember better then I do) over the years (from places they did and did not apply to):
-The puzzle from Notre Dame: My S got that too! Didn’t apply and had no interest. He does still have the puzzle…we like puzzles in our family.
-D got a luggage tag from a school (don’t remember which from which one), she kept it, might have to ask if she still has it…
-Both my kids got lanyards from a couple schools: All went to goodwill
-Keychains: My S never got any, but D got one from Tulane. We used it for our pool key at our old house and now it carries one of our spare house keys.
-My S got a pencil case from Whittier in the mail. It was flimsy and he didn’t want it. H uses it to hold onto important receipts. He also got a water bottle and pen when we toured Whittier. S kept the pen and I just unloaded the water bottle from the dishwasher this morning.
-My D kept getting mail from Marinello and Paul Mitchell cosmetology schools…no interest there!
-S keeps getting mail offering student loans…
It’s not mail from a particular school and I wouldn’t say it’s ridiculous, but both my kids started getting “College” magazine in the mail the summer before their senior year…neither subscribed to the magazine that I know of, they just started getting it. Must’ve ended up on the mailing list somehow!
It is actually a pretty good magazine and they both read it and enjoyed it…
@frostymom My kids got posters too! It’s amazing how beautiful some campuses are! I kind of wish we had a kept the one from Williams which was taken on a gorgeous fall day! My S got a poster from Eckerd and that sparked his interest in that school, he applied and got accepted, but isn’t attending…sadly!
I’m glad my kids didn’t get any refrigerator magnets…we have enough as it is! I’m constantly throwing magnets away, much to the protest of H and S and D (when she’s home). Um, we don’t need two Southern California Edison refrigerator magnets that one of us got at a booth at the OC Fair. And why is H so attached to that Blue Cross/Blue shield magnet? Come on! I’ll keep the Hawaii refrigerator magnet and the Union Jack one, and the Eiffel tower one, and the ones the kids made in elementary school…
Don’t even get me started on pens! My kids got so many from schools! H is no help either…every time they sign up for health insurance at his work, he comes home with 6 pens…do we need 6 Aetna pens?! Or three Blue Cross pens?!
I don’t remember which school, but one sent my son a box with a t-shirt…and confetti. Was tempted to send the confetti back.