<p>Puh-leese! You don’t really think you’re going to hold out for the mail when you know it’s just sittting there waiting for you online!? 
…and last year SPS had it up shortly after midnight.</p>
<p>I agree creative! I will want to know ASAP!!! Who could wait for the snail mail when you could know your fate w/in a couple of mouse clicks?</p>
<p>i totaaaallly agree with creative.
you wouldnt be able to resist, just do it.
accept the 21st century jonathan ; )</p>
<p>hahah you guys are probably right. I really cannot see myself waiting a dozen extra hours for mail.</p>
<p>oh i KNOW were right.
ahah jk</p>
<p>It will be so hard when you are so excited for the result and receive a rejection mail</p>
<p>Again, and maybe this is splitting hairs, but I just can’t see a school posting decision information in an e-mail. I can see them sending you a link back to their secure web site so that you can retrieve an on-line message. That would be basically a reminder to check your decision, not a decision itself. </p>
<p>But this idea that there are some schools that will send an e-mail that actually announces the decision? What an underhanded way to blow off a kid! But it’s not just a lame way to transmit a rejection decision…to someone who spent $50-$100 or more and countless hours to apply. It’s also an uninspired and cheesy way to welcome a kid to your community! That applicant is also excited but the e-mail would be exciting only in terms of the substance of the news. In other important ways, it could be a let-down. There’d be no sense of community or allegiance or family in an e-mail decision.</p>
<p>E-mail news is fine for, say, SSAT score results. You just need to know the numbers and move on from there. You don’t need to feel like you’re part of the SSAT family. The SSAT people don’t care. You don’t care. But if you’re accepted at a school where you might be living 8-9 months out of the year, you will want more than just an up or down result…especially if the result is up. That’s one reason an on-line decision can be pretty cool – even compared to the tangible thrill you get from a mailed decision. When you get the good news on-line, you can also receive access to other information that is unlocked just for you, including more information about the school, a place to schedule and plan your revisit, contact information for people you can reach out to with the school, a “personalized” bulletin of information that covers the interest areas specified in your application. These are all things that keep drawing you in to the school…and that’s what the school should be doing. </p>
<p>As students, you may THINK that all you want right now is to know, yes or no, but you will be so much more impressed by the schools that also welcome you over a school that sends you an e-mail decision. And the Admission Director’s job isn’t just to inform you of the result; it’s to get as many of you as possible to attend. An e-mail decision doesn’t advance that end. And so I STILL can’t imagine that there’s a school out there – with an Admission Director who will still hold that post next year – that is sending out decisions in the body of e-mails to applicants, whether it’s good news or bad.</p>
<p>^^^
That being said, please don’t make a decision on which school to attend based on something as gimmicky as the loot they might send you in the form of t-shirts, etc. or how much you liked their acceptance letter or whatever. Some schools will pull out all the stops but when it comes to dealing with the minds of 13,14 and 15 year olds, I question the ethics of it all.</p>
<p>One school I just talked to said that they are going to the post office on Saturday morning and that the “plan” is to send an email to accepted students on Monday NIGHT as well. They also said that it is the first time they are doing that AND that they are “having someone else doing it” so they are not so sure how it will work out. She did not say if it will link to a site or if the new is in the actual email. I’m actually not sure if she knew herself since it was new.</p>
<p>they send you t-shirts?</p>
<p>hahahha</p>
<p>@ Linda S: That would be really creepy if they outsource the transmittal of the actual decision. They’d be releasing that information to a third-party contractor…so someone would be seeing your results before you do. Yuk.</p>
<p>Dyer…I dissagree with it not being exciting. I see now that I was mistaken and that our school did not actually send a decision email, but an email which linked us to the decision. We did have the choice of waiting until the actual paper decision, which my son considered, but in the end, he really wanted to check that e-mail. It was very exciting…in fact it left my son in tears of joy and relief. The school of course followed up with the “hard copy” admissions package…which he was looking even more forward to (we were too, because this is where the fa info was).</p>
<p>Dyer - do you actually think hiring a 3rd party to handle the mailing of some envelopes is that big of a deal? It doesn’t faze me in the least.</p>
<p>Me either! As long as the news is good, I don’t care who sees the decision before me! 
The sooner we can get the results the better. I only wish the schools my daughter applied to had email decisions at 12:00 am. I would be on the computer by 12:01!</p>
<p>omg!!
im so nervous. so much is dependent on if i get in or not and i’m never gonna get another shot at applying, so this is it!
and i think i put my best into it!!</p>
<p>good luck everybody =)</p>
<p>I am glad I am getting my decision in a hard copy. I want to wait for the real thing that you can hold even if you do not know at 12:01.</p>
<p>I said this last year and I’m saying it again: the schools that have online decisions are offering the most humane means of notification. Whether it’s an acceptance or rejection, whether you live in state or overseas, you can find out at the same time. Last year, I felt badly for kids who were waiting for DAYS for the mail to arrive and holding out hope that they would receive an acceptance.</p>
<p>hmmm dk 10chars</p>
<p>I definitely agree about on-line decisions being superior to mail-only notifications. And I consider an e-mail that links to a secure on-line decision to be an on-line decision. It’s just a way of opening the door for the applicant.</p>
<p>An on-line decision takes no more than 25 seconds longer than an e-mail for an applicant to access the decision. And there’s far more control over content and accessibility than an e-mail provides.</p>
<p>keylyme…the e-mail you got – linking to a decision on the web site – that’s definitely a good way to go. I’m talking about the concept of an e-mail that itself contains the decision, which is what is implied by the OP asking what to look for in an e-mail header to determine whether the news inside will be good or bad.</p>
<p>
I’m trying to remember her exact words…“we’re having someone else do it” I think is what she said and then “so we don’t know exactly how it’s going to work.”<br>
Now, I made the assumption that it would be a vendor of some sort, but heck, it could be their tech department?</p>
<p>One school we visited and did not apply to we asked in the interview about online notification of decisions and they said that they do not because they had heard about a school who had messed up the online notices and some that had gotten an online acceptance then got a snail mail rejection…??? YIKES.</p>