<p>Parents focus on US News rankings in these discussions, believing that colleges are just trying to move up a notch or two. While that might be part of it, selectivity is a very minor factor in the rankings. </p>
<p>The dirty little secret is that bond rating agencies look at selectivity very closely. So higher selectivity could save a college tens, even hundreds, of thousands of dollars based on the interest rate they have to pay on their bonds. Viewed in that light, paying 50 cents to generate rejected applicants might be a very, very wise financial strategy.</p>
<p>When we adults get mailings from lenders and so on, we are able (one hopes) to view them in an appropriate context. A sixteen-year-old may be unable to do this. The value of threads like this is that they remind parents to help their kids put recruitment mailings into the right context. That is all we can hope to do.</p>
<p>Some of those recruiters don’t even make sense.
For example, I requested information from Willamette several months ago. Soon enough, they began bombarding my for-college email with A LOT of messages encouraging me to apply ED. One week before the deadline, they called my phone number three times. Then, on the day of the deadline, I sent the recruiter a polite message explaining that I might not send an application to the school.
He never emailed me back, and I have not received an email from Willamette since then.</p>
<p>I don’t see anything wrong with the invites to apply and info brochures. But some of the come ons lack class, IMO. I think these schools should keep this in mind when the send out their missives. I think that NOT sending out info, when so many colleges are, is implying that some kids should not be applying to those schools, and it is important to let those know who might not consider themselves HPY et al material to entertaint he thought that they might be. I’m talking about those who just aren’t in an infrastructure where they would think about so applying. I know my brother and his friends were not, many years ago, and applied to schools going through my leavings. His best friend ended up at MIT. WOuld have never thought of applying except that the info was in his best friend’s sister’s files. Their school certainly was no help that way.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse You don’t see anything wrong with the likes of Yale, Harvard, Princeton et. al. sending recruitment invites to students they know that they are not going to admit? I see plenty wrong with that. What such “invites” foster is hope that a student has a shot of getting in when there is none.</p>
<p>It’s like those lottery ads about what you could do with all the money that you will win if only you play. These ads work, state lotteries are a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Everybody loves to dream, and these schools are selling a pipe dream and the teens and their parents are being pulled in to the tune of $100/application and these kids are applying to 20+ schools. It’s a shame. Not only does it foster false hope, but for some the rejections are taken to heart and does negatively affect how they perceive the schools that do accept them. </p>
<p>This behavior by the schools is wrong. If they feel a need to send out invites, they should do so to only those kids that meet their academic profile.</p>
<p>I have found this to be an issue for me and my family. Recently, glossy 10-15 page booklets in all-color have come to my household- from Harvard, Princeton, Yale, UChicago, Rice, Swarthmore, and the likes. What a waste of resources! My twin brother and I are both in elite magnet schools in a high-ranking county (my school is 80th ranked public school in the country, his is somewhere in the top ten as it is an early college) but likelihood of acceptance remains low. Honestly, though we both have high scores etc.; I wish they wouldn’t send all the packets–I know they mean nothing and it’s just a chance for me to feel desperate.</p>
<p>UChicago is especially hard nosed in its recruiting. My son received over a dozen contacts from UChicago trying to get him to apply. He rebuffed all the recruitment efforts until UChicago sent him a shirt. He thought the shirt was a good indicator that he actually had a better than normal shot at getting in at UChicago. He fell for it and applied. </p>
<p>We later discovered that UChicago has been on a mission to reduce admission rates to rival those of HYPSM. Had we known, would have saved the $100 application fee for a nice dinner.</p>
<p>To be fair, my kid got a shirt and got in at U of C. And once she got in, we (parents and kid) were bombarded with swag (t-shirts, hats, pens, scarf for kid, coffee table book and pizza cutter at accepted student days, etc.). It was kinda crazy. We parents kept our swag put away until kid decided (why should we market for the college to our kid?). Once she decided on someplace else, we starting wearing/using it. :)</p>
<p>In some sense, it is misleading to make students assume that they have a high chance of getting into a school. At the same time though, thinking about prestigious education could be motivation to do good in school. I know it’s silly, but the small hope of me attending a top tier can really get me to try harder. “Aim for the stars and maybe you’ll reach the sky.” I don’t think I’d get into Stanford or an Ivy, but if I miss that goal, I won’t land on my face. I could get into the honors college at UCF, or go out of town to University of Miami, and I’d be happy. </p>
<p>I think it’s important for students to realize that college advertisement isn’t an indication of admission chances. We’re going to have to live with solicitation our entire lives. But if we decide to take meaning from pamphlets in the mail, it should be motivation to try hard and reach that goal. </p>
<p>It doesn’t really bother us. We try to remain realistic. It will all be over soon. Most are the same junk. However, I have opened a couple of these envelopes and found interesting information about programs and scholarships that I did not realize were available to her. One school sent us additional information about a particular interdisciplinary program that would be of interest to her. These were for schools my D had shown interest and a couple that were not even on her radar. One school, actually sent her an application fee waiver based on her GPA. This is a school she was applying to anyway.</p>
<p>With D1, U of Chicago sent a bunch of mail. This school was on her radar and it was a reach but she loved the programs and applied. She was accepted with scholarship. At the end, she went elsewhere but it was in the final two. </p>
<p>We really don’t pay attention to HYPS. The FA structure is tempting though, but we remain realistic about the acceptance rate. </p>
<p>rhandco: I think colleges do list the scores of students actually attending (less skewed by those top scorers offered admission but choosing to go somewhere else) Also better than average of all those applying since many people attempt “reaches”</p>
<p>The biggest problem here is believing that getting a letter from a school in any way means they are interested in you. They are usually generated by information you have put on your application when you took the SAT or ACT. Then, all students whose scores fit into an equation are mass mailed the letters. Since these schools have abysmal admit rates, no matter what the reason for applying (letter, legacy, wanted to go there since birth, etc), chances are they are not getting in.</p>
<p>My D and I loved going through the brochures and letters originally. After awhile, most never made it in the house as we threw them in the trash as soon as we took them out of the mailbox. Most never made it into the house. I think she kept Colorado’s because it had gorgeous pictures of mountains on it. Kept it on the fridge for quite awhile.</p>
<p>My son who wanted to go to Princeton since he was 10 and I have no idea why, his parents are big ten ( top40 state school alums) He was wait-listed there and accepted at Columbia in engineering but went to William and Mary, why? because they really wanted him. The president of the College himself called after he was admitted and was waiting to the last minute to accept ( hard decision), and asked why he applied. We had no idea, we’d never heard of the school. But he looked at the website read about the core liberal arts curriculum and said it reminded him of Princeton, focus on undergrads, research with fabulous professors, small class yadda yadda. Mr Revelry, the President of the College, said he was a Princeton alum and was trying as hard as he could to make W&M as much like Princeton as a state-school budget and endowment would allow ( shameless plug there) </p>
<p>Go to where they want you, fabulous and smart kids go to all types of schools and will succeed wherever they go…</p>
<p>He just got accepted to Princeton for Grad school</p>
<p>My daughter is NMSF and has gotten more than 4,000 emails from colleges, plus hundreds of glossy booklets in the mail. It’s truly overwhelming. I tried sharing this information with my Facebook contacts, and rather than sympathize with how overwhelming this is for a teenager trying to select a college to apply to (with the daily badgering by desperate-sounding universities begging her to apply, giving her doubts about where she has applied and if she should send out any more applications after 12 already), my contacts thought I was bragging. Do they really want their own kids bombarded like this? I’ve started filtering her email for her so she can find the really important messages from friends and teachers among all the pushy advertising. She’s felt so much pressure from it all that she’s having a hard time focusing on school and is at risk of making poor grades and losing the scholarship offers she already has. Yes, it’s a good problem to have, but it’s still a problem. I would advise teens to set up a separate email account just for colleges to contact, and use that on the PSAT and college websites where you can express an interest, and that way they can get all the email offers yet only deal with it when they log in expressly for that purpose, rather than throughout the day on their smart phones, clogging up their email accounts. </p>
<p>Working in admissions, I can give you a little advice on ways to stop the unwanted outreach. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>At College Fairs or High School visits, only fill out cards of schools that you are truly interested in. College fairs are a great opportunity to speak with admission reps and Alumni, if there is a genuine interest after the discussion, then fill out the card. That card is what we use to start the conversation (emails, letters, phone calls, etc… ) </p></li>
<li><p>As mentioned previously, it is wise to create a college email ie <a href="mailto:mukamalkcollege@gmail.com">mukamalkcollege@gmail.com</a> or something. There you will house all of the clutter that we admission people send throughout the year and your regular email will house all of the normal email and spam that you are used to receiving.</p></li>
<li><p>click the UNSUBSCRIBE button on emails. It really works. Check the whole email, there should be a link that says unsubscribe and that will remove you from the school’s system and a simple phone call to the university will remove you from their mailing/phone call list. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Any other questions, feel free to contact me. </p>
</p>