So I’m categorizing this as college search as in, colleges searching.
So in the last few months with PSAT and SAT scores coming out, etc people around me have been getting engaged by colleges whether it be through email or actual letters.
I’m a junior, I should mention.
They’ve received emails and written letters about colleges being interested in them for scholarships and the like.
I have not.
I recently updated my email (as I had a typo in the one I provided originally to the College Board) and have still yet to receive anything (recently being like, 3 or 4 weeks ago).
No letters either, nothing.
Should I be concerned? My grades are good and my scores are as well. I feel like maybe I’ve done something wrong or am lacking somewhere?
In most cases after students take the PSAT, and again after the SAT, they get deluged with huge piles of advertisements from universities and colleges. These should be considered to be just advertisements and nothing else. These piles of physical mail and emails do not mean that the students actually have any edge at all in getting accepted or getting scholarships at schools.
If you gave the college board the wrong email, then this would explain why you haven’t gotten large numbers of ads in your email. I am still a bit confused regarding why you haven’t gotten piles of ads in the physical US mail. Have you moved or did you check something that said “don’t send me junk mail”?
In any case, I think that the main consequence of this is that your parent (possibly your Dad) has less junk mail to put in the recycle bin on periodic recycle days (for us every two weeks).
Almost all of that info is just marketing material anyway. You need to be going out and finding the colleges that make sense for you. Based on cost, major, test scores & grades, location, etc. Then go to their admissions page and get on their mailing list.
When you fill out the form before taking PSAT, did you opt out of the “college search” program? If you checked the box, CollegeBoard can not share your score and address with colleges.
You may have inadvertently checked the “do not share my information” box while taking one or both tests. If so, there is probably a place in your College Board online profile where you can change the setting. You might want to log in and take a look at your profile settings.
I think that college marketing mail can be a valuable source of information. You just have to learn how to curate the deluge. Aggressively toss the clearly unsuitable schools while still keeping an open mind about types of colleges or areas of the country that you might not have considered before.
I would not worry about it all. My PSAT was nothing special and I got emails from Harvard, John Hopkins, WashU, and other prestigious schools that I know for a fact I won’t get into. Ultimately, colleges pay little to nothing to get receive information from high school students so they can bombard them with emails to gain their interest. However, many of these kids apply and get rejected.
Most of the time emailing ( and I say most because sometimes colleges are really interested in the students they’re soliciting) is just a way to have more applicants apply so there is a greater pool of students to deny from. This, in turn, lowers their acceptance rate.
Don’t worry about it for one second. Be happy you’re avoiding wading through the junk mail.
University of Chicago is known for sending tons of unsolicited mail to just about everybody on the planet. Heck, they even sent goodies like shirts to some students. But not to my kid. No idea why, but we only received 4 or 5 mailings over the past year or so when every other human being with a pulse was being showered with love. The UChicago mailings were creative and appealing but not even targeted to my kid, just the same ones that could be sent to anybody and everybody. Didn’t matter - they just accepted him.
Everybody is different in their approach to college search, but I think the downsides of the junk mail far outweigh any potential upsides anyway. 99% of the mailings look exactly alike from the pictures (smiling, diverse students laughing in bucolic settings) and in the marketing puffery included. You could plug just about any college name in them, they’re so predictable and generic.
Think of it as you doing your part to save trees, be grateful for all the paper cuts you’re avoiding and don’t give it another thought.
Here’s a fun tidbit- if you select U Chicago as one of your 4 free score sends on an SAT subject test, they mail you a t-shirt for free. You might want to do that if you’re not feeling the love so far.