<p>If your house is anything like mine the waiting of these last few weeks seems endless. Son #2 checks his application/decision status at least twice daily and if he's not coming home right after school we get the standard - "Anything in today's mail?" text around mid-afternoon.</p>
<p>Well today I'm going to offer a different perspective on the process; this one has to do with the "weight" of college. Since September 2009 I've saved and tracked every piece of physical mail that "Junior" has received from colleges. Over the last year and a half I've had to move to bigger boxes and expand his seemingly never ending list of potential colleges.</p>
<p>I've learned about "couples" like Washington & Lee, Franklin & Marshall, William & Mary as well as Baldwin & Wallace. We've heard from more Technical Institutes than you can shake a slide rule at including NY Poly, Rochester, Pratt, Lawrence, Rennselaer, Stevens, Michigan and Illinois. I've met quite a few of the Wesleyans - Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and the plain old Wessy in Connecticut. Plus I got tired of counting the Saints after Louis, Johns and Olaf.</p>
<p>To date he's received 471 pieces of mail from 131 colleges with a total weight of 43.5 pounds. The funny thing is that the mail sent seemed to have no impact on his final list. His 6 applied to schools sent him a total of 19 pieces of (pre-application) mail with his safety school accounting for (12) of those items. Two of his schools sent him (0) pieces and a third sent only (1). </p>
<p>FWIW, here are the "Top 5" mailers:</p>
<ol>
<li>Washington Univ. St. Louis - 27 pcs.</li>
<li>Vanderbilt - 20 pcs.</li>
<li>Chicago - 17 pcs.</li>
<li>Carleton College - 15 pcs.</li>
<li>NYU - 15 pcs.</li>
<li>Univ. of Miami - 15 pcs.</li>
</ol>
<p>109 mailings <---> 0 applications. Not one of these schools even vaguely tickled his interest; so I'm at a loss to understand the algorithms that go into deciding who gets mail and who doesn't.</p>
<p>Anyone else have any stories to share on the mailing front?</p>
<p>I can’t say any of the mail made any difference whatsoever. I had created a “starter list” for my kids to investigate, they did their investigating online and added a few others of interest. The mailings usually just went straight into the recycle bin.</p>
<p>My daughter, who is a junior, can’t believe the amount of mail and e-mail she gets from schools that do not have an engineering department since on every college test she’s taken (PSAT, SAT, ACT, APs) she always indicates that her major will be mechanical engineering. </p>
<p>It makes her (and me, too) wonder why schools without an engineering department waste their time and money…</p>
<p>The only school where the mailings actually made a difference came from Macalester. They sent periodic postcards that were whimsical and funny, we actually looked forward to getting them. Because of the postcards, we visited. He really liked it and he applied, but alas, decided against it at the admitted students weekend, it was a really close thing. All the rest of the mailings were dry as dust and made no difference whatsoever.</p>
<p>Most of the mail that came in hit the trash without much of a look. One letter was noteworthy and has made an impact. The letter was from the head of the honors college at the University of Alabama, Dr. Shane Sharpe. Not only was it well written, but, he gave general advice regarding the admissions process without trying to sell anything. It was interesting enough to catch my son’s eye and have him apply in the Fall. We never thought he would actually end up at 'Bama, but, that looks like what’s going to happen.</p>
<p>What an entertaining post! Just today, I thought it is high time I start to get rid of all those college envelopes that were addressed to my senior daughter, class of 2011. Also, figured it was time to get rid of all the envelopes that sat for almost two years and were addressed to my son who graduated high school in 2010. I remember dumping two full brown bags of college mailings three years ago when my oldest went off to college and she did an ED application and was accepted to her top school in December of her senior year. Those mailings were certainly wasted on that kid. Over the past four years, so many colleges sent stuff and no one ever opened the envelopes. I could have heated the house for 1/2 the winter with all the paper products we received. So glad we are done…</p>
<p>I crossed/cut off the labels and IDing info on the college materials & donated them to our nearby public HS. They were very happy to receive the materials that had been cluttering our house for both D & S and we were glad to get them out of our house. Neither kid paid much (if any) attention to the mountain of mail received, other than noting which schools accepted S & with what merit awards. Many of the Us he applied to sent very little mail at all. Found out a lot more about many LACs than we ever wanted to know, tho neither kid was interested in attending a LAC.</p>
<p>I’m actually surprised that DS hasn’t been inundated considering that everything I’ve read and heard conforms to what I’m reading here. DS left his contact info with a dozen or more schools at a college fair last October, the same month he took the PSATs. Maybe 3 schools sent material once immediately afterwards and nothing since. We toured 6 schools last month and only one of them has since been heard from. I’m not complaining, it’s just odd. Can’t imagine how they compile their mailing lists…</p>
<p>Edited to add: I to see my first and only post coming just after HImom’s 4,816th…</p>
<p>My D (at my urging) fell for the WUSTL mailings. I thought if they cared enough to write weekly, she was a shoe-in. Sadly, I was not aware that WUSTL is pretty much a ‘wait-list’ school, and she got taken in and for a ride. No big deal, really, it was more of a “safety” so to speak.
We also fell for the Washington and Lee, a high percent of students are offered a full ride through a merit scholarship. My D did get the full ride offer, but W&L was not a right fit for her.
A few Ivies contacted her, but I think it was nothing more than a simple brochure.
Some schools helped paint an accurate picture of themselves, William and Mary, Tufts, and that was helpful.</p>
<p>I think the best thing these ‘over mailings’ do is to provide some level of desire and excitement about college in general. The campus tours my D and I took were some of the best times of my life, seeing what she was looking for in a school and in life.</p>
<p>I ignored all of the emails I received. They were too annoying to go through. The mail was somewhat looked at (some of it got tossed immediately, others not). Frequent mailings were more of an annoyance than anything else. </p>
<p>One school got an application based solely on mailings: Ithaca College sent me a package advertising a semester in Washington DC program, which I was extremely interested in. I eventually sent them an application and got the first “yes” in December (pretty fast turnaround since I sent the application in November). I even got money, but I honestly wasn’t interested enough (the money didn’t even make a dent in the cost of attendance- it wasn’t small, but it didn’t help).</p>
<p>NYU’s frequent mailings didn’t get them an application at all. I never had a high opinion of the school (I live in the NYC area so it wasn’t a big deal for me to go into the city- I wanted a campus for college and NYU overcharged for its lack of one). I got something from them at least once every two weeks. </p>
<p>The other ridiculously frequent mailers were local schools who wanted high caliber local students. They offered streamlined apps, no fees, “special” tours, etc. I didn’t even both applying and they sent me emails up to four weeks AFTER I left for my chosen college (saying it wasn’t too late to apply). I even receive emails now occasionally telling me about transfer opportunities…</p>
<p>This is my fourth one going through the process, and I have to say that he got less paper than the others. Significantly less. I remember with the first one, in particular that we had boxes of view books and information and brochures. Not so much with this guy. However, he has gotten a number of phone calls from school and emails have even crept into my account. He tells me that he is inundated with e-mails, so that may be the new way to contact kids. It also might be that because he was not the caliber SAT score catch that the others were, that he is isn’t getting as much. </p>
<p>So, yes, we did get paper, but not as much as in earlier years. I started all of this 10 years ago, so I span a decade now in this business. My oldest was getting mailings years before his junior and senior years, I remember.</p>
<p>Mutti2012, the same thing happened with my middle child. He wasn’t receiving anything and I couldn’t imagine what was happening. People told me that it was probably because he did not check a box to receive information when he took the PSATs in 11th grade. Turns out he wasn’t receiving anything because the College Board did not have his correct birth date. They had him listed as born in 1900 and the College Board is not permitted to send on the names to colleges of any students who are younger than 14 (I think that is the age). I guess colleges get lists of students based on what students check as possible majors and their scores on the PSAT or SAT. College Board didn’t think a 109 year old was really going to attend college. They finally straightened it all out and then he started getting lots of mailings.</p>
<p>Wirefox, that’s a funny story; I’m glad the bizarre date didn’t have any other computer-generated ramifications. I asked DS whether he had given additional information at the PSAT and he said he couldn’t remember (!), so that might account for the lack of mail. Also, his handwriting is atrocious so it’s possible that his contact info at the college fair was illegible! I remember reading something somewhere suggesting that kids type up labels with their contact info to bring to fairs and thinking that DS wouldn’t do something like that in a million years…</p>
<p>We decided to keep all the mail D2 got beginning Sept 1 just to see how much it would be. It is currently a 13 inch stack on my dining room floor. It would probably be higher except our enthusiasm waned after she made a decision in mid Dec. Now she is getting almost daily phone calls from schools she hasn’t even applied to wondering if she has any questions. She’s a little phone phobic so I make her talk to everyone who calls.</p>
<p>Oh come on now - you’re an adult - you didn’t realize that it was just a mailing list targeted to kids who scored X on standardized testing? Why would you have thought it meant anything more than that? How can you say you got “taken for a ride”?</p>
<p>Yea, we kept all the kids college email in a trunk. Each time the thought was to use if for camping bonfire after graduation… but it didn’t happen.</p>
<p>DS was very busy, rarely taking the trouble to look at his college snailmail. I would pile it in the kitchen in hopes, and when the pile got too big (or company was coming) I’d add it to the trunk. When sorting through it last month I found 2 uncashed checks for his 17th birthday in 2009. Oops.</p>
<p>My D just dumped hers in the recycle bin last week. It weighed 50.4 lbs and filled a 20 gallon plastic container! She had fun collecting it and looking at some of the brochures; especially the ones from Ives knowing without a doubt that she could never get in.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that any had an affect on her. A couple of emails piqued her interest though. The ones that waived the application fees and the supplemental essays and offered a decision in 3 weeks! She actually filled out a couple and got decisions so she knew she had a back up plan just in case.</p>
<p>Now if only the “real” decisions would hurry up and get here!</p>
<p>We’ve been recycling as we go, so I have no idea of the total tonnage.</p>
<p>The ones that drove me nuts with my older daughter were the ones that arrived in May, saying 'IT’S NOT TOO LATE!" </p>
<p>The funniest story I’ve heard was on a message board a few years ago. A mom said that her son got some mail from some really unusual colleges after he took the PSAT. He apparently was off a row when he bubbled his interests, and they thought he was interested in culinary arts and a Jesuit college!</p>
to see my first and only post coming just after HImom’s 4,816th…</p>