We’ve been putting the snail mail in a box after it’s been read, and since I was curious, I sifted through it recently.
She received mail from about 80 different universities, 9 or 10 of which were requested. Total count is about 150 pieces.
What’s funny or maybe just predictable is that the two biggest hitters were colleges she’s never been interested in, but those both are private and in our own state which might explain it.
Kind of makes you feel for the admissions departments.
If you sign up to receive stuff on the standardized tests, you’ll get inundated. Personally, I recommend not doing that. Instead, go through one of the guide books like Fiske to determine schools that might be of interest then sign up to receive stuff on each college’s website if you want stuff. It’ll save some trees and you don’t get crap that doesn’t remotely interest you.
Seriously, as a recently graduated senior I recommend taking doschicos’ advice. My coffee table became a dumping zone this year for college mail. The volume of it was so overwhelming that most of it did not even get opened. It can seem exciting to receive stuff from schools, especially top schools, but most of the mail I got was from places I wasn’t remotely interested in attending or knew I had no shot getting into. By the time I had committed to a university, my pile of mail must have totaled at least 20 lbs. The environmentalist in me shudders.
A couple of them got a college a second look (a couple of upstate NY engineering schools), and another pulled a university into the “definitely interested” category. Other than that … low return on investment. So yeah, maybe better off without. Couple of nice poster size prints though. That wasn’t bad.
I don’t get why the vast majority of these don’t go straight into the recycle bin like any other junk mail. I can’t fathom saving it any more than I’d save the junk mail from all the local car dealers or pizza places or nail salons, With everything on the Internet, there’s zero need to save any of it, even from a school you are interested in.
I also threw unsolicited college mailings away almost sight unseen. D was intrigued by a couple of brochures but even they were tossed after a day. I didn’t see the point of saving them and certainly not for a full year or o two!
Why do people save them until the bitter end (after the application process)?
I’m not sure where I messed up, but my name is Jonathon, and about half of the spam college letters are adressed as Jon Hon. I get a kick out of it every time.
My oldest got one that served as instructions for how to turn college brochures into an origami frog. We still have that one. Cleverly, the brochure itself is too stiff and the wrong shape for making the frog.
I’m reluctant to trash it this early in the process-- my son may decide to take a real look at one or two of the schools we’ve omitted. Or his 15 year old sister may want a look at them sometime this summer.
It’s one little box in the basement… no harm in hanging on to it for a while.
Just don’t check the box on the SAT/ACT and you won’t get any at all. We learned about this after the first kid and the second and third didn’t check the box- our contribution to the environment I guess.
Some of the brochures are really expensive to print. Yale sent a 100 pages color glossy book! My son had has been keeping all of the mail in a pile, it is over 2 feet high already. The volume of email is even worse.
