<p>I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend anyone. I was joking. I didn't mean to insult any students, I was intending to make a sarcastic comment directed to the creator of the web site -- who clearly is trying to entice students with the idea that his site will somehow help them get into selective, competitive colleges. If you Google the name, you will find that the guy has posted articles all over the internet describing himelf as a college admissions dean without revealing the name of the college, clearly trying to bolster his personal income by suggesting that he is affiliated with far more prestigious colleges. He's got at least half a dozen different internet businesses with very pretentious names, probably all shells for the same basic revenue garnering schemes. </p>
<p>I got the information about the ACT scores and GPA from university web site itself -- I didn't make it up -- it says admission is "guaranteed" with certain minimum stats. So if in fact the university has somewhat higher standards, they probably should clean up their site. Admittedly I picked a low number to make a point. An 18 on the ACT is in the bottom 3rd -- the university says it requires a minimum of least an 18 on the math & engish subscores, and also that the student must be in need of no more than one "remedial" course. In fairness there are some other requirements to get to the point of "guaranteed" admissions.... but then, the site is also clear that those with lesser stats will be considered for admission. </p>
<p>There are hundreds of colleges that simply have more spaces than students to fill them, and operate on essentially an open enrollment basis.... I am assuming that 90% of the mail you would get from this "recruiting" site would be from that sort of college, whether or not U.La at Lafayette is one of them. But Mr. Rosenfield doesn't do much for the prestige of the school where his employed with his little sideline. I think its pretty scummy for a college dean of anything to be using his credentials and connections to make a profit off of gathering private info from unsuspecting students -- there is a lot of money to be made from selling targetted mailing lists. </p>
<p>In any case, schools that have "enrollment managers" are being rather blatant about what is essentially a commercial marketing practice of trying to maximize revenues by leveraging financial aid -- it is one of those positions that combines admissions + financial aid together, very similar to being a used car salesman. (Look up "enrollment management" on Google or check this commercial web site to get an idea of what that means: <a href="http://www.enrollmentresources.net/%5B/url%5D">http://www.enrollmentresources.net/</a> -- the focus is clearly on marketing, not on quality of the student body or quality of academics).
In this case you have a guy who is employed at an Enrollment Manager at a public school, on the public payroll, exploiting his training and connections to make extra money for himself by gathering and selling personal inforrmation. If it is out of line for me to take a dig at his credentials... then I'm sorry. This is a guy who posts articles all over the internet describing himself as " a former college counselor, dean, and director of admissions at the secondary school, college" or "veteran college Dean and Director of Admissions". It seems obvious to me that he is trying to inflate his own credentials by passing himself off as a person with somewhat more prestigious credentials -- I was trying to do a little deflating, again -aimed at him, not at the students attending the university where he holds his marketing post.</p>