<p>College mailings are pretty sporadic, and the promotional mailings are all contracted out to just a few companies–we’ve gotten virtually identical mailers from 2 schools with only the school name, stock photos, and color scheme changed. I very much doubt anyone in the admissions office would be so vindictive as to go into the data base and cut out your son’s name based on the HS he attends.</p>
<p>But there may be a bigger issue with your son’s HS. If several years running they’ve made multiple offers to graduates of your son’s HS and their yield is consistently 0%, it seems perfectly rational for them to just give up on the school. They have limited recruitment resources; why spend them where they’re just banging their head against a wall? And it’s quite reasonable for them to start to assume that, whether under the influence of GCs or just as part of the student culture, word has gone around your son’s HS that this college should be regarded as a “safety,” an acceptable place to go if you don’t get better offers. Some schools don’t mind being used that way; in particular, it seems to me that schools doing a second round of ED are basically asking to be used in something like that way. Other schools resent it; if they’re consistently striking out, it drives down their yield, drives up their admit rate, and makes them look weak and unappealing.</p>
<p>You seem to be saying your son wants to use this school as a safety. Nothing wrong with that; everyone should have a safety. But if the school doesn’t want to be his safety, it has that right, too. And if it so decides, then it’s not a safety for your S. Unfortunate, perhaps, but they’re under no legal, contractual, or moral obligation to admit him.</p>
<p>If it’s not just a safety or backup–if it’s truly his top choice, or among his top choices—there should be ways to signal that. For starters, to a college, nothing says “I love you” quite like that ED app. If he’s not there—if it truly is just a college he’d settle for if his preferred options don’t work out—then frankly, I’d just write it off based on what you know (or think you know), and move on with the search for a genuine safety.</p>