<p>We weighed all the mail we got…44 lbs</p>
<p>thanks collegeboard for charging me to register for tests, then making me pay to have these scores sent out. thanks for being a non profit that profits so much from students, selling our information. for some reason, reading the “selling info for 50 cents” part made me mad. totally did not check the box last year, still receiving stuff from my uninformed and easily wooed freshman days. </p>
<p>@teastraw Now now we wouldn’t want to hobble the ability of the non-profit to complete it’s mission would we? 
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<p><a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?;
<p>My DS entered my email address instead of his when registering for the PSAT, so I’ve been getting all his college marketing email. I created a folder for and have put every college email in there. Since mid-January, which is I guess when the College Board started selling the names of sophomores who took the PSAT in October of 2013, he’s gotten 703 emails. He took the SAT last month for the first time - I can only imagine what the deluge is going to be like once those scores are sold.</p>
<p>I think i know why more schools don’t pursue NMSFs. From data-crunching the state lists (CA, MA, Houston HISD) that were made public, i could infer from the last names that NMSFs don’t have the “desired” racial mix the schools want:</p>
<p><a href=“Interesting demographic glimpse of California National Merit Semifinalists - National Merit Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>Interesting demographic glimpse of California National Merit Semifinalists - National Merit Scholarships - College Confidential Forums;
<p>I totally agree about the overload and wastefulness of the brochures these colleges send out. BUT… my daughter just graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Pomona. We had never even heard of Pomona, but she received a brightly colored brochure with flip flops on the front cover which peaked her interest enough to do a little research about the college. Four years later…</p>
<p>@Rdtsmith I did that too! But I recently cleaned it out, throwing all of the ones she didn’t apply to into the recycle bin. They actually came in handy for the “Why this college” supplements.</p>
<p>When looking for colleges for my senior in high school daughter, we mainly used the internet for research, and most of the flood of college physical mailings ended up being thrown away, but once in a great while one would be interesting enough to open. She is a high-enough achiever that it is not unreasonable for her to apply to any college, so we did take a look at what any Ivy League school had to say. Mostly the ones that got read were from the LACs that we had already read about online that might have been a good fit.</p>
<p>My son keeps getting these emails from “poor” Harvard students telling him they’re really affordable for lower income kids like him. One of the kids even emailed him back. Yeah, right. Harvard is teeming with low income kids.</p>
<p>for what it’s worth, my D and I love these mailings…we go through them together every night…yes, we’re making fun of them…but its still pretty darn fun…plus, she gets very interesting mailings…although we’re skinny white people 
my D attends a school that’s 70%+ African-American…so we get the “minority” mailings from the colleges…with truly hilarious (and unrepresented) views of 'diverse" campuses…</p>
<p>My D got a letter from Harvard which we kept on the fridge for awhile as a joke. As a Yale legacy, the chances of her even applying there was slim to none. [-X </p>
<p>As a HS senior (and an environmental activist) I abhor the rankings game and the massive waste of resources generated by the rankings fervor. My brother is a '10 UChicago grad and he feels that the college culture has been changing for the worse there since the college began chasing rankings/prestige by engaging in the guerrilla mailing campaigns and other expensive strategies. Acceptance rates went from 39 percent in 2006 to 13 percent in 2012 and the rankings change from #15 to #4 in the same period reflects how successful UChicago prioritizing rankings has been. But this is so antithetical to UChicago’s educational mission and values, and also may have brought to campus more kids who value prestige, contributing to the current race and class on ‘warfare’ on campus. It makes me sad to think of the money and also all the creative energy going into marketing that could be directed to so much more productive ends. </p>
<p>On the positive side, college mailings brought me 3 match/target/comfort schools (Macalester, Pitzer and Reed) which I would not necessarily have applied to if not for the quality and depth of the information in the mailings. Of all the catalogs/mailings that inspired me to go do more research on my own, these 3 colleges turned out to be good options for me (each for different reasons) if I go into regular decision. </p>
<p>The mailings that have been most helpful are the ones that target my particular interests and come from faculty/students in a department or speak to a specific extracurricular opportunity. When I was filling out that 70+ question survey on the ACT, I thought: what a waste of time, I bet nobody fills this out…but that turned out to be the best part of taking the ACT! Letters describing departmental and club offerings, foreign language study, forensics, etc. have been very interesting and helpful. A Macalester student involved in a pretty unusual interest of mine wrote me a personal letter about the dozen students who are deeply involved in this same activity and the little family they have created. The most impressive personalized communication has been with a professor in classics at WUSTL. He sent an initial letter describing the major plus other university support for the classics, study abroad etc. I replied with some questions and he responded with another informative letter. We’ve now actually struck up a correspondence and if I were to end up at WUSTL, I feel like I already have a contact/ally on campus in one of my fields! This doesn’t cost as much as mass marketing expensive viewbooks and is more likely to identify good ‘fit’ between a student and college.</p>
<p>I can’t help but believe that if most students reverted to applying to 8 or fewer schools, and if colleges targeted their realistic candidate pool, rather than just going for an aggregate to get those rankings up, then more actually helpful communication – such as my experience with the professor at WUSTL– would be happening. </p>
<p>my son ended up at Temple and i think it may have started with a solicitation letter. They offer very generous scholarships to kids with high SAT scores and when i realized he’d likely get one, i decided we’d tour Temple while in philly one day. my thoughts were well, if the school is being this generous, we should at least go take a look. he liked what he saw and after visiting several more colleges, Temple actually became his number one choice. had we not realized those scholarships were available, he probably would not have even considered Temple. i realize this is the why is Yale sending out so many brochures thread but i wanted to point out at least one case where the soliciatations were helpful. </p>
<p>"Why do people take these letters, emails, even phone calls personally? When a personalized credit card solicitation comes does anyone really think there is an actual human being somewhere that has determined “wow, what a credit score, we want him!”</p>
<p>No kidding. This is one of the discussions on CC that blows my mind – that people think that this means someone at the school actually, personally, wants that specific kid. It’s like people who normally understand the concept of “people buy mailing lists based on certain characteristics” all of a sudden forget it when it comes to colleges.</p>
<p>Does Pottery Barn <em>really</em> think I’m a woman of exceptional taste - or is it that they know I live within X miles of a Pottery Barn and have disposable income of $Y? Same thing for the pizza place or the yoga studio or the hair salon or the political candidate who wants my vote. </p>
<p>I don’t know why anyone would even remotely think that this is anything of more significance than any other mass mailing that jams your mailbox.</p>
<p>I do not think the criticism of elite schools in their promotional material is necessarily justified. To begin with, what do you want these schools to do, send out letters telling people they’re hopeless and to go away? If these schools really wish to me more egalitarian they should give the impression of recruiting everyone. Also, like any of us, the more choice the better. They should want to have the largest pool of applicants possible. Also, if they practice what they preach, they use a holistic approach. At least in their mind there is no absolute cut off. Remember they do not know about the student till they apply: Sub 2000 SAT’s but started a million dollar company, won a major art show, have a hit record? They claim to consider people as more then their text score. It is in a way for the student to know themselves to know their true chances They have a sub 2000 SAT and did not start a internet company. But from the colleges point of view the more applicants they have the more potential to get the best ones. </p>
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<p>The Phi Beta Kappa people are not slackers on the mail front, either. D1 never gave them her address, so all the mailings from them to order keepsakes, etc. just keep coming to my house 2 years later.</p>
<p>@robotrainbow </p>
<p>As seen in the article, many elite schools send out these mailings to students whose chances of admission are very,v very, very slim - even with a holistic approach.</p>
<p>A student who has, for example, a 25 ACT and a 3.5 GPA for example will almost certainly be denied at Yale or any other very very selective school. Yet these schools send mountains of mail to these students even when an infinitesimally small percentage of those students get in with such numbers. It simply happens so, so rarely. $100 down the drain for sending the app & test scores.</p>
<p>Also note that a very large amount of students apply to these Ivies and Elite schools anyway. However, they admit a very small portion of their applicants. They can select from thousands of very qualified students. So many smart students are denied. There is absolutely no shortage of incredible kids applying to the Ivies and it is bothersome to many, that for some reason, they fill up mailboxes of students who feel mocked (such as myself).</p>
<p>I hate to say it but I think a lot of families take pride in letters from elite schools. Elite schools have a way of making everything they do seem elite. A letter from an elite school offers bragging rights to so,e parents to say, my child is being courted by Harvard. The letter is an accomplishment in and of itself. Being the parent of a potential Ivy leaguer is an accomplishment… Congrats mom! You pushed out a smart kid, raised them well and put them in the right schools and activities, now we will reward you by offering her admission to our school.</p>
<p>But don’t hate elite schools. They do what they do well. And for all the pomp and circumstance, many of their graduates go on to humbly make their mark on society, great and small. They develop vaccines, create new technologies, serve in the peace corps and make numerous contributions to society without recognition or any concern for it and happy to work alongside people of all races, colors, creeds and backgrounds. Unfortunately, it’s pompous &@$?&!$@ that get all the publicity and attention.</p>
<p>Be sure the kids save their Harvard rejection letter. They can hang it in their office later. Nah nah. :-)</p>
<p>Nice letter by the author. She nailed what many here seem to have missed. It is not a problem that schools send mailers to advertise. That is just good business. It is unethical (In my way of thinking anyway) for a school to target huge numbers of students who do not meet their admissions window with the intention of improving the school’s acceptance rate numbers. The root cause is the fallacy of equating good education with low acceptance rates. Rather than focus on the method of advertising, lets do something about how we evaluate institutions as ‘elite’.</p>
<p>It is not elite schools that make the graduates who go on to do great things. It is the individuals themselves using their own talents augmented by an education that is not substantively better than that of the top 150-200 schools in the country. It is more like going to an elite school is like driving a Lexus. A Camry is a better deal and is basically the same car, but both get you to the same office. It is what is in the car that really makes the difference. The Camry represents every state flagship or other outstanding institution that is overshadowed by the shiny marketing and non-essential features of their Lexus cousins…the so-called elite schools.</p>