TheaterGoddess, the thing is, I think my one daughter wants to attend Wash U, but at the very least she wants to check it out in person. I am sure she has the grades ( about 4.6 weighted ) and she is NHS, and is a big community volunteer… what she doesn’t have is a sport, and probably not enough EC activities.
Yup, the colleges buy mailing lists.
My daughter has gotten several mailings since taking the PSAT last year as a sophomore, and her score that year and this year were pretty average. She’s gotten mailings from schools that don’t even offer her preferred major, or anything close to it.
The only real rejection bait she’s gotten is the University of Notre Dame.
lol I didn’t mean to imply it was a conspiracy. But I do believe there are certain schools ( Wash U being one of them) that have boosted their selectivity rating and then their ranking on USNews by trying to get many to apply even if they are not on target for the school. This is a known thing, I didn’t make it up.
@AbsDad Your daughter has better stats than my son, I’m not at all implying she won’t get in. I was making a broader statement and was not talking about your child specifically. I wish her the best!
@TheatreGoddess remember, however, that marketing is not just done to “boost a selectivity rating and thus ranking…”
It is also done to raise awareness of the school among students who may not have heard of it. WashU is a great school, but it is Division 3 in sports, it’s not in the Ivy League, it has a name that is not memorable or may be confused with a state schools, etc. When I was in high school I was a perfect student for WashU, but I had no idea that it even existed. I understand why they market, and it’s not just to game the rankings.
Colleges also buy lists from services like parchment and naviance. The only meaningful marketing is if you get a personal, signed letter inviting you to apply, complete with a contact and call back information. Sometimes a college has an initiative (e.g. recruit high stat hispanics) and they waive fees and have scholarships and even reimburse visits, or they may desire students of some specific profile. Other times you might get a phone call or letter from a coach or department where they want you specifically for some reason.
I think it pads the application numbers for many of the private colleges. My son receive a huge number of mailings from Yale and Chicago, a few from other Ivys, nothing from WUSTL, plenty from various LACs, and postcards from our in-state public universities, plus a few from OOS publics. He indicated that he wanted to study engineering and remarkably, he received the vast majority of mailers from non-engineering focused colleges. Pretty poor marketing IMO. He did receive phone calls from students at our better in-state engineering schools inviting him to apply and to answer his questions. Some of the marketing was pretty odd.
Everything else is college equivalent to Christmas catalogs. You may find some good fits, however, or possibly information on scholarships. Whatever you do, make a plan early and take advantage of the summer months before you apply.
I think it means those schools could afford to dole out a bit more financial aid…
On a positive note, some good things come from those college emails and snail mails: When my soph D first started getting them she was so excited and it was a real ego booster. She then would start asking me, “Is this a good school?” or “Would I like this school?” It gave me an opportunity to say nice things about a range of schools since she seemed so focused on the big names and she needs safeties like everyone does and our discussions led to me learning more about what she wants and doesn’t want.
^^YES^^
Funny story, but D got a mailing from a not-prestigous school, quite early on. She was horrified to discover that a seemingly personalized letter was littered with grammar and puncutation errors. She couldn’t let it slide. She emailed the rep it was signed by and stated that no college should ever send out advertising with those types of errors. She never heard back, and never received mail from them again.
I mention that because I like @citymama9 's point. We both learned of some colleges that we didn’t know about before, which might be useful for S '16.
@Lindagaf Lol! That’s too funny. Why do I get the feeling that you and your daughter are very similar? Am I right?
@absdad : the colleges don’t even know about your daughter. They contracted a third party whose job it is to send mailers to students in specific zip codes and/or who hit a specific test score threshold.
Students still need to demonstrate interest, by filling out the ‘request info’ form, because these unsollicited mailings don’t register them with admissions.
For WashU, high test scores are probably the most important factor, all other things being equal.
@absdad this is a marketing tool. Your kids will need very high test scores ( among other things) for these schools and even then, they will still be hard to get into.
The mailings came after every round of test scores. We put all that literature in a big box. My son and daughter never looked at it. After they filed their applications we recycled it all.
I don’t know that all the colleges are just being cynical and trying to up their application/acceptance ratio. But if you go back about 20 years, WashU was one of the first wanna be elite colleges to start to flood the post office, in order to build up its name recognition. It has been a successful campaign, in my opinion. At first I think most recipients had no clue that Washington University wasn’t in the State of Washington or Washington DC. We live in the Midwest, and I’d even been to WashU. But my kids weren’t interested in living in St. Louis at all.
One reason to look at the literature before putting it in the recycle box is that sometimes it contains a free application code that could save you $40-$100.
Re the free applications, some of them pretend like that code is selective when it isn’t, it is pure strategy. My now college soph had 4 schools that were free to apply to that would have been real contenders with actual merit.
Good luck trying to get OFF of those mailing lists! We had boxes of junk mail solicitations from colleges. Many were totally meaningless. My kids got stuff from schools that they had zero chance of being accepted. Zero.
And yes…Wash U seemed to have an unlimited amount of money to spend on mailings.
Your kids are probably getting emails,too.
Well, Stanford Humanities sent our kid a fancy brochure explaining their programs and encouraged our kid to apply. He did and got in REA. It was only one of HYPSM which send us a nice brochure.
I wouldn’t read anything into getting brochures in the mail. If you want a better idea if your daughter is competitive for admission to certain schools , look at the common data sets for schools she’s interested in to see where stats compare to last year’s accepted applicants. I think that you’ll be surprised to see that most applicants had stats similar or better than your daughter’s at selective schools. As parents , we sometimes forget that our children are competing with other students from across the country and world for a limited number of acceptances . Better to check early on for planning purposes than find out later IMO.
For anybody who’s not familiar with the Common Data Set, or how to find it for a particular college, a simple Google inquiry works most of the time. e.g., “CDS Washington University,” “CDS Reed College,” “CDS University of Michigan.” We found this to be a very useful source of information, always checking to be sure our kids’ test scores and GPA’s were in the top quartile of recently ENROLLED students – to identify potential “match” or better prospects. You’ll find this information in Sections C9-C11 of the CDS. Of course, being in the top quartile of last-year’s admitted students is no guarantee of admission; but NOT being in the top quartile would imply that the applicant has poor chances (absent some other especially compelling qualification).
There is a question on the SAT/PSAT/ACT registration about GPA. I’m sure there are some top schools that target bases on GPA and test scores. As a matter of fact, I know this to be true because some of those stupid emails actually say “college board student services gave us your info” and mention high scores as a reason that the schools may be a good fit. I can’t stand the mailings and we tried opting out (kid checked the boxes to opt out on every test, went online to CB site and asked to be removed, but the harrassment NEVER stopped). Another reason to greatly dislike the college board.