<p>What does it mean when a school like Penn sends an application to you in the mail unsolicited?</p>
<p>It is on my son’s list of prospective schools but he hasn’t contacted them yet as far as I know. His stats are probably right down the middle (for Penn) as far as SAT’s,ECA’s GPA and so forth.</p>
<p>Is this a good sign as I would like to hope or is it fairly common?</p>
<p>I’d appreciate comments.</p>
<p>did your son take the PSAT's?</p>
<p>Yes, he did. I can't remember what his scores were. Pretty good I think.</p>
<p>They probably got his name based on his PSAT scores if he checked the one box that releases them to colleges.</p>
<p>The acceptance rate for those who receive an unsolicited Penn Application is roughly 60%</p>
<p>For those who have to reach out to the school first, the rate is more like 18%</p>
<p>For those who have already been admitted to Penn, the acceptance rate is 100%</p>
<p>Wayne Gretzky always used to say, "You always miss 100% of the shots you don't take." </p>
<p>So shoot for the moon! (Even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars!)</p>
<p>hrm? Adidas, where did you get that first number from? Are you just making that up?</p>
<p>I think he was just going for the punchline on line 3... lol...</p>
<p>LOL pretty funny but I did get my hopes up there or a moment. Would admissions answere this question with a phone call?</p>
<p>hmm... i would imagine they say something like "we received ur child's name through the collegeboard student search service, b/c of his outstanding performance on his PSATs/SATs, he has proven to be a good candidate for Penn" something to that extent...</p>
<p>sealion,</p>
<p>It actually means nothing other than they got his name off of some list (probably from the college board if he has test scores over a certain cut-off). It's purely a marketing ploy for them to get as many apps as possible to decrease their acceptance %. After I got a high PSAT score, I started getting apps from Harvard, etc. I was all impressed with myself until I found this out. </p>
<p>There are some schools that send out preferred or "blue ribbon" apps. Even these are no guarantee.</p>
<p>If he hasn't gotten it already, your son will accumulate tons of unsolited apps, catalogues, DVDs, etc. put out by the marketing dep'ts of these colleges.</p>
<p>"It's purely a marketing ploy for them to get as many apps as possible to decrease their acceptance %."</p>
<p>That makes total sense, because the main question is: How many of the qualified students does Penn accept?</p>
<p>I don't think it really makes a difference. It's not like they keep track of all these people since that would take a lot of work. So I really don't see how this could help.</p>
<p>I'm just saying, how good do you have to be, and who are you really competing with.</p>
<p>Someone else mentioned to me (or I read it somewhere) that applications provide significant revenue for colleges, as well. What does Penn charge to send an application?</p>
<p>uh they charge so you can get an app in your hands, or so you can return the app??</p>
<p>I haven't had the time yet to look at the process closely but I thought that it was required to submit an application fee when you mail in your completed application.</p>
<p>They will send you the application for free. It's students actually applying that probably makes them a fair amount of money.</p>
<p>do the math of course it makes them money. 70 bucks*(lets round 20,000 applicants)=1,400,000. Although not as huge as Penns endowement (or whatever it's called) it's still a lot of money. I presume this money is used to staff the undergraduate office and pay other bills.</p>