Hey,
I’m an international student and thus took the TOEFL last summer. Back then, I selected the option “let us share your results with colleges which might contact you based on your score”, unknowing this feature was used by let’s say shady institutions most of the time. Today, I found another strange e-mail in my inbox, written by the president of Arizona State University (or at least in his name). I was told that he was looking forward “to welcoming me this autumn despite COVID-19 as an undergraduate”. I never even heard about ASU before (coming from Europe) and I certainly didn’t apply there, let alone accept an offer. This is just weird. Now I’m wondering how they got my e-mail address (and the mail came from a legit domain indeed), and if ETS might be responsible for that. Has somebody else received this mail? I’m happy about any answers… Thank you!
ASU is a legitimate university, and likely has you on an email list from TOEFL. Schools emailing you from TOEFL probably aren’t “shady”, just not top-tier schools. Just unsubscribe if you don’t like it.
Yup, the “let us share your email” checked basically means you allow them to share your details so you’ll get marketing stuff from colleges. If it’s only ASU consider yourself lucky! … and to back up the poster above, just because you haven’t heard of them doesn’t mean they’re shady. A lot of colleges use this tool precisely to raise their profile to potential applicants who may not have heard of them. Remember there are a few thousand colleges in the US.
By the way a friend of mine has a kid at the honors college at ASU. It’s quite highly regarded locally and offers excellent financial aid for top students.
Thanks for replying so quickly. I was just astonished at the tone of that ASU e-mail. Don’t you think it’s a little weird to write “I look forward to welcoming you as an undergrad this autumn” to someone whom you’ve never been in touch with before?
And when it comes to my term “shady”: ASU is probably different, because after I did some research on my own, I have to agree with you it’s not that bad. But over the last few months, I have been contacted by a so-called business school in a very pushy way: They tried to make me apply ED unknowingly and kept on calling, mailing (physically and via e-mail), even sent me WhatsApp and SMS messages daily. That’s what I call shady. But it’s probably just a personal opinion.
How did they get your phone number? That’s not normal.
I trust you set up a separate email address for all college application related stuff, too? That’s common practice here anyway.
And ASU have I think had glitches in their system. It seems my daughter also got a couple of emails from them recently (she did get the usual marketing from them last year and is no longer in the applying to colleges stage).
My D20 keeps getting emails from ASU even though she never applied and has unsubscribed from their emails. She just got another one this past week. I think they just have a very aggressive marketing department.
A lot of colleges generally send emails like that. It is a little disturbing how they treat you like you have already been accepted when you haven’t even indicated interest, but that’s just part of the whole US college experience when it comes to mail. But it does seem that ASU is even more past what would be considered normal in college mail. But I have had similar experiences with other colleges
Yes, they got your contact information from ETS.
This particular email is because of a mix-up at ASU. Probably a whole bunch of the students who were supposed to get the “so excited to see you this fall” got a “you should think of applying to ASU” email. 