<p>A few weeks ago, my husband answered the phone. It was from someone saying they were from the admissions department of the University of Montana in "Maloosa". "Isn't it in Missoula?", my husband replied. He cut the call short and said "We're not interested".</p>
<p>Then, this week, someone called for my daughter, saying he was from MIT's admissions department. My husband said that she was out and that the caller should call back the next day. No call came the next day. </p>
<p>Is this some new kind of scam, or are these legit? While my daughter is indeed at the beginning of her college search, we had never heard of college admissions offices calling prospective students at home. Has anyone else received these kinds of calls?</p>
<p>College admissions called my daughters all the time. Did your D have high PSAT scores? Sometimes that puts them in a talent pool that gets some solicitation.</p>
<p>My son did receive quiet a few calls from colleges last year. It was usually a current college student offering to answer questions and telling him how much they loved it at XYZ University. They never asked for personal information. (I would be wary of those that ask for personal info) Recruitment has gotten more aggressive in the past few years, especially if the PSAT/SAT/ACT scores are high.</p>
<p>Both of my daughters received unsolicited phone calls from admissions offices urging them to apply. Happened quite a lot, more with D2 than with D1, which makes me think it’s a growing trend. Usually it was student volunteers making the calls, but some may have been outsourced to call centers (which probably explains the “Maloosa” foul-up). Usually, once the caller had identified herself (all the callers were female, if I recall correctly, probably because it seems less creepy), my daughters would interrupt their spiel and politely say “Thank you, but I’m not interested; I have other college plans,” and that was that. No real harm done apart from the usual minor annoyance of a junk phone call.</p>
<p>I just assumed they were working off lists of PSAT/SAT/ACT scores above specified cut-offs.</p>
<p>In 2006, we were given contact info from one U that accepted S, which told him how to reach a HI family who had sent 3 kids to the OOS U, all in his intended field, engineering. S refused to contact. I left it up to him. He did speak with other kids who attended a variety of Us,?as he felt interested. The Us we called were friendly but none initiated calls to us or S.</p>
<p>D never got calls or info from any U before transferring to the U where she graduated.</p>
<p>My daughter received several phone calls from one college admissions office encouraging her to apply. They also sent letters to her during that time, waiving the common application and essay. They stopped calling when she told them she accepted elsewhere.</p>
<p>My son received a couple of phone calls. They were very polite, and stopped calling when they learned he is aiming elsewhere. I think kids with high PSAT scores often get those calls.</p>
<p>I received a lot of calls after I was accepted for yield (I say a lot-- I mean maybe from three or four schools), but I didn’t receive any asking me to apply. I did get a lot of print and email materials though.</p>
<p>My son has received several already. He has very high PSAT/ACT scores, so that is probably the trigger. None of the places that have called him were ones we visited. One he hadn’t even heard of.</p>
<p>My D has received several unsolicited calls from colleges. Some have been quite persistent. Almost all were small religious schools and she is clearly not interested in small religious schools.</p>
<p>The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and Concordia College came up on our caller ID numerous times, as did a few others. We generally screen unwanted calls, but the persistance made it necessary to ask Twin Cities to please remove our number from the list. I recall that they all complied when told not interested. Like the mass mailings, I have to wonder what the response rate is for this kind of marketing. In the age of the internet, are some kids really learning about a new option via random phone call/ brochure – and then attending there? For sheer volume of mass mailings, I give the prize to University of Kentucky, with a close second being Wash U, though at least we had toured there early on.</p>