<p>I agree with Duke’s being awesome, and my boys were impressed with Kenyon’s as well. We still have a calendar from Carleton hanging up- and I think they also like Williams and Brown’s. We already miss the mail!</p>
<p>Grinnell has really fun Ins and Outs pieces. Seriously, the stories alone made my mind up about applying.</p>
<p>Rose Hulman sends out very clever postcards. The one for their summer program was excellent - a fold out for a pumpkin catapult (as I recall).</p>
<p>Personally, USC and UVA seemed to show off their programs nicely through a combination of stats and stunning pictures.</p>
<p>Though I didn’t apply, I LOVED Caltech’s!</p>
<p>I agree, Duke’s pictures are stunning, albeit obviously digitally enhanced.</p>
<p>Carleton’s emails are hilarious!</p>
<p>Oh My god haha!
totally agree abt SVA
i actually have the School of Visual Art catalog.
it is humongous but really really cool though!</p>
<p>I really liked Stanford’s, and I thought USC’s was very aesthetically pleasing. But I think I’m just a sucker for gorgeous pictures and red. ;D</p>
<p>I really wanna see these UChicago postcards now!</p>
<p>I’d like to see the UChicago mailings too! Carleton send out nice things, but I think Goucher’s mailings and website really hit their target.</p>
<p>I never got any postcards from Chicago, but the viewbook itself is fun. I like the story/dialogue format of the example students, and its small size is convenient for carrying around the house when I’m bored.</p>
<p>Yeah, I applied. =)</p>
<p>Brown and Williams sent exceptionally interesting viewbooks, with good pictures and intriguing reads. Williams’ caused me to apply, actually, since I’d never heard of it before.</p>
<p>I hate Duke’s books for the very reason cited by others: they’re digitally enhanced. Interesting when I’m looking for cool graphic effects, but any school can hire someone (or grab a student) to do that. Not the best thing when I’m looking for images of life there.</p>
<p>And, despite no desire whatever to attend, I -almost- applied to Caltech purely because of their Periodic Table. I requested it just for one with Feynman, and upon seeing that he was not listed as Fe, almost tossed the thing–but they’ve put him under Rf, his initials. Feynman’s playful autobiographies got me into physics, and it seemed to me that Caltech has something to be proud of in his past there.</p>
<p>Grinnell’s stuff was fantastic.</p>
<p>Baldwin-Wallace in Ohio - A++</p>
<p>First D gets a shrink-wrapped T-Shirt with a bee on it, for “B-W”
Then she gets a cardboard tube that was an ACT/SAT Survival kit - pencil, mints, other cool stuff…</p>
<p>Then, what I thought was the most clever of all…</p>
<p>A postcard showing a student frolicking on campus in tha fall amongst the fallen leaves, and there on the front was my daughters first name spelled out in digitized leaves, now how cool is that?</p>
<p>It was really hard for her not to apply there after all of that!</p>
<p>PS - she liked the Grinnell Ins and Outs as well, some great students there - there was a story about a XC runner who got the news that her father died while she was on campus, what a touching story about how her teammates and dormmates supported her.</p>
<p>agree-- Chicago & Colgate. A plus for Chicago started their cool postcard campaign early in the process (mid junior year). </p>
<p>I liked the Colgate- “Lucky You-- 2013” A tribute to the incoming class will be 2013 & Colgate has a special affinity for the #13. It is a clever post card fold out w/ cool b/w photos & when completely unfolded you have a 17" b&white photo of a gorgeous campus, rolling hills, lake taken 1906. Kind of makes you want to be a part of it!</p>
<p>On the negative side NYU sent a huge ( maybe 17"x14) VERY expensive, color publication that did not have much meat to it. I felt that it was criminal to throw it away and it made me say — oh that’s why it’s 50 K to attend…</p>
<p>S received piles of paper this year, but to me the books that stood out have already been mentioned: Chicago’s, Swarthmore’s, Pomona’s, and Yale’s. I particularly liked Chicago’s “days in the life of” approach from the viewpoint of a 1st year moving through the year. I thought this was the best attempt to answer the “What’s it like here?” question that I have ever seen.</p>
<p>Really, Chicago’s whole campaign suggested intellect without pompousness. “We’re all smart here”, it implied, “but we don’t take ourselves too seriously.”</p>
<p>I’m probably the only one here who has seen one, But St. John’s College in Annapolis was amazing. Their stuff is all down on old fahion looking paper. No pictures except for one of a seminar and of the chairs they have on campus. No viewbook, just a dialogue between students talking about the unique program. It stands out because it doesn’t look like any other material I’ve gotten. They even send out a dvd explaining the program</p>
<p>My favorite college propaganda:</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd (I’m a humanities kid)
Deep Springs (I’m a female)
Reed (I once brought up the idea of going to school in the Pacific Northwest to my mom when she was tipsy and she immediately sobered up and said, “NO.”)
St. John’s College (completely agree with the poster above me)
Carleton (I don’t remember anything particularly unique about it besides the fact that I found it to be honest).</p>
<p>If I had gotten any of the Chicago postcards, I would have liked them a lot. I’m pleased-- and to be honest, really surprised-- that they make a significant impression on the CC population at large. I think Chicago’s in a position where it tends to take a lot of risks , as the school’s probably at a point where they realize there’s a part of the market they will never capture so they go after the portion of the market that they will. All of the schools I listed-- and many of the schools that have been brought up on this thread-- are in similar positions to Chicago. It seems like even if people don’t end up liking a school or its personality, they at least respect the school’s attempt at honesty in portraying itself.</p>
<p>I really loved Caltech’s, they’re definitely what sparked my interest in that school.</p>
<p>NYU’s booklets were great.
I’ll probably cut some sections out and use them for an art project. 
I also loved Yale’s booklet, and U of Chicago’s letters always impress me.</p>
<p>While I hated that Duke’s were digitally enhanced, I did like the story that the pictures told.</p>