That is definitely a strategy one can take, and probably the one most people would take, including me. I have a sales email and I don’t bother unsubscribing from anything. My main personal and work emails are kept as clean as possible.
My son hates having unread messages, and I told him he should open every message from colleges on his list due to some tracking demonstrated interest. That combination of things made him decide that the “unsubscribe” strategy would be best. To our surprise, it seems to have worked! Hardly any errant messages sneak in. He’s going to be stoked to unsubscribe everywhere once he makes his final decision. He made the rookie mistake of using his regular email for colleges. I hadn’t joined CC yet at that time, so we were flying blind
Oh heavens yes—the sheer quantity is mindboggling!!
Most of D23’s emails (as opposed to paper mailings) from selective places seem to be centered right now on trying to convince her to apply ED2. The mailings from less/nonselective institutions are simply trying to get her to apply.
Oh the Yale books! And the PILES of posters and glossy stuff from UofChicago! One of my seniors wryly commented at one point, “Gee…I wonder why these schools are so expensive.”
That’s definitely well within the range of students getting in (anecdotally of course) from what I’ve seen, so very good chance!
Obviously there are no guarantees, I have seen in the past kids get rejected with very high stats (4.3+ and 1500 SATs), but that might be because of VT doing yield protection, or deciding the student wasn’t a fit for what they are going for.
Is your son secretly related to mine?
I told mine that during the national championship game, I am going to go through and unsubscribe/delete the 10000+ college messages on his computer while we watch together so that he can get control of his gmail back!
mine too— drives me nuts. doesn’t believe they truly track interest from opened emails/clicked links, and refuses to categorize emails into folders or anything to organize them. She complains email is antiquated… wait till you get to college 'hon and it’s the only way the “olds” will communicate with you…
Because of his lack of email management, my friend’s son missed the 4 email invitations to apply for the College Board Recognition Award
(thus missing out on $25K/yr from BostonU or $30K/yr from Northeastern, if he is accepted to the college).
Many schools buy lists based purely on zip code, and U of Chicago is clearly one that aggressively mails to students who have never indicated interest (like my kid). They are not looking at stats, they are looking for zip codes where median HHI is above a certain range, a proxy for families who will have the means and interest to apply. In my town we live in the “good” school district. My friends’ kids in the under-resourced school district don’t get these mailings unless they indicate interest.
I don’t know about this for all their mailings. We live in a rural town. I think one person did go to UChicago a few years back. (In a way, it would be perfect for DS but not at this time in his life. Maybe grad school) Anyway, he gets constant physical mail from them, and it could only be based on his ACT (35/one try) because they do not come visit this county, there are basically no college visits or fairs around here, etc. They must suspect he would not have the funds to attend full pay. (Small town is 30% poverty level)
It’s probably a combination of targeting certain likely schools and casting a wide net for some high stats kids who are hidden.
Based on anecdotal evidence, UChicago is simply casting a wide net. Period.
Maybe some/many of the applicants who get these mailings and decide to apply are high stats or have the means to pay, but they’re just happy to get more kids to apply regardless of whether they can get in or not. Then each year the student newspaper (and the AOs at info sessions) can tout their record low acceptance rate.
Speaking of Biola—which has sent a handful of stuff here—my very, very left-wing and lesbian D23 is more than amused that touring Belmont a couple summers ago apparently put her on the mailing lists of all of the self-professed conservative evangelical Christian colleges in the nation. (She’s got nothing against religious places, and if she was after a different major she might have applied to a few, but that particular brand of religion, well, let’s just say it isn’t a good match.)
I’m not so sure about that—I’ll note that while my family lives in a rather well-off neighborhood, it’s a flyspeck of an enclave inside of one of the poorest urban zip codes in our state. So unless they’re targeting down to the street level—and that would be quite a bit more expensive, leading to lower ROI—I don’t think they’re targeting wealth. I’m with @sursumcorda and @DadOfJerseyGirl in thinking that they’re just after getting more and more applicants so that their acceptance rate can stay in the mid-single digits.
The U of Chicago is your friend who looks up today’s Wordle once they get to guess #6 so that they can keep their streak alive.
@bethy1 Sorry to blather on about the scattershot marketing. Our '23 opted out of standardized testing – no ACT or SAT scores on record anywhere – and she only applied to 5 schools total – so we just chuckle that anyone even has our address.
Our '23 opted out of standardized testing – no ACT or SAT scores on record anywhere – and she only applied to 5 schools total – so we just chuckle that anyone even has our address.