We got one too and wondering what it was. My guess is it’s a marketing.
We got one also and based on email it looks like marketing.
It’s Northeastern, which is very well known for this kind of nationwide marketing. They want you to put in an application and help drive down their acceptance rate. They’ll give you a fee waiver at this event, and mention that they have no supplemental essays (making it very easy to apply).
If you think Northeastern is a good fit for your kid, go ahead and attend.
interesting that they give a fee waiver too, def does not off set the price of the trip.
S24 got same email.
Got the same email.
Pretty much everyone gets an “exclusive” invite 
And the more unlikely you are to receive an acceptance, the more they’d love to have you apply.
To be clear: the school itself is fine and offers a good experience to students who like their experiential learning (co-op) model. It’s just that their admissions office engages in questionable practices. Look past that and determine for yourself if the school is indeed a good fit for you/your student. Then decide whether it’s worth applying to.
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Is this why they keep going down in the rankings in US News every year? I know the rankings are themsleves questionable though.
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While on the subject of marketing, we have been receiving TONS of snail mail from Case Western for last few weeks. Got several variations of mailers (case study, dorm life, clubs, research/intern opportunities etc.) for each of Engineering, Humanities, Pre-Med and Social Sciences tracks.
D24 did put Case as college of interest in her College Board account preferences but this is beyond insane. But on the flip side we have avoided the Northeastern spam 
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I think I unsubscribed from Northeastern a couple of months ago. Lately we have been hit hard with Princeton spam for some reason.
Actually until the just-released rankings (wherein they dropped a bunch) they have for the most part been climbing in the rankings over the last decade or two.
My two cents is Northeastern legitimately benefited from the nationalization trend (more people applying outside their local/regional colleges), as one of the selective colleges in arguably the most popular market nationally (Boston).
But they also gamed the system to enhance that effect as to US News rankings.
Nationwide marketing, though, is consistent with the real effect. Obviously a lot of marketing like this ends up ineffective, but the marginal costs are low and lots of excellent colleges do some form of this, presumably because sometimes it results in additional applications from desirable applicants.
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Case has long been big on spamming potential applicants. S23 was receiving at least 2 emails a day from them on average, almost every day, for months (more like a couple years) on end.
There was also a poster hear a few years ago who was (allegedly) the parent of an applicant who got tired of the emails after the application was in so they unsubscribed. The student then got an email from Case (allegedly) saying they were removing them from consideration because the un-subscription indicated a lack of interest in Case. Crazy. Case is also big on deferring candidates who EA instead of ED1 then sending them emails highly encouraging them to switch to ED2 if they want to demonstrate commitment (thus implying, but not saying, they may not get in otherwise). S23 called the bluff and was accepted RD anyway, so not sure there’s any teeth behind it generally.
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Another school that aggressively markets nationwide is UChicago.
But Northeastern goes a step further and has their reps visit lots of high schools, so it goes well beyond mailing glossy brochures. And they do great presentations that really excite students about their school, thereby driving up applications.
Case and NE are the same in rankings this year
Yes, they had a well-attended booth at our college fair. Although again, I think that is all fair game, meaning I have zero problem with a college aggressively marketing itself.
Has anyone made their kid visit a school or part of the country the kid said they didn’t want, just so that the kid could have the exposure to those potential options? I’m thinking kid doesn’t know what they don’t know, how nice some of them might be. It’s one thing to swing by a school we happen to be near, but getting them on an airplane over protest might be a bit too much. Still, I’m curious.
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I am most amused by the over the top marketing stuff, emails you just delete. S24 has gotten a bunch of huge books from Dartmouth over the past few weeks and yesterday got this majestic cut out/sticker project from WPI, which he has zero interest in as a music/economics major.
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Once we hit the visiting stage, I was more trying to encourage narrowing than broadening the list. He had too many good options (at least on paper), not too few.
But if you were facing a kid looking at a list they were not excited about top to bottom, I could see maybe doing something to expand their horizons.
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We are still sitting here with the list of reaches, one low target, and the in-state safety. I was thinking another safety would be nice, especially one that would be a different sort of experience geographically. Cost isn’t a factor, but boy that NM package at Alabama sure is sweet and I hear the campus is quite nice… I was saying to myself, well, does it really offer something different than the in-state flagship, and the answer might be, better honors program and like 10x the number of NMFs (or something like that; you get the idea).
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