Hi. I couldn’t figure out the best forum to ask this in. I’m curious if anyone knows what exactly the College Board sends colleges about scores for students who opt in to receive email from colleges for the PSAT test? I know they don’t send exact scores (or say they don’t), but I have heard and see anecdotal evidence that they must give colleges some idea of a student’s score range. But I haven’t been able to find any article that discusses exactly how this works. Do they send cohorts of names within a score range and if so how wide are the ranges? Thanks.
Honestly…I don’t know what the college board does. But if I was guessing….I’d say they give your info to everyone.
Our kids got mail (back in the day…we filled boxes with it) much of it from colleges where they didn’t have an ice cube’s chance in hell of being accepted.
So…if your kid opts in…just understand…it is impossible to opt out of getting this information!
Thanks. We’re on #3 so been through it a couple times. With #2 I decided to keep all the physical mail in a huge storage bin until she accepted somewhere so I could take a picture of the stack afterward. It became two bins by the end. I do marvel at how many millions are spent by colleges on marketing and how much tuition could be reduced if they didn’t, buy that’s another story…
What made me curious is #3 is getting some more targeted mail/email and it seems to imply they know something about his PSAT score. I had read somewhere that CB doesn’t share specific scores but does somehow make schools aware of kids score ranges and I was curious for the specifics.
My kid got these too. They appeared to be targeted, but frankly, they are just marketing.
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Oh I know they are marketing. Again, I have written many times about the waste of it all, particularly from schools that already get a ton of applicants and have great reputations. I’m not sure why there’s confusion about my question which has nothing to do with whether the letters infer any status or interest (they don’t).
What I’m saying is…I doubt that it matters what your kid’s SAT score is. If they chose to share the info…it will get shared.
Any thought that this might be because of a certain score…in my opinion…as the reason kids get this mail or email…well…that idea needs to be put aside.
So…do I think the college board shares specific scores? I really don’t.
I don’t believe there’s an option to opt-in to broadly share PSAT scores (or if there is, it would be something targeted to specific places after the fact). There’s an option to have the CB share your contact info with schools to receive communications. I assume everyone who opts in gets communications from every school that do such messages including the Ivies. But numerous places have said that the CB has a way to sending info that effectively alerts the schools of school range. I’ve been asking if anyone has the specifics on that. Again, I’m not sure why you keep thinking I’m implying that kids only get communications based on their score when I keep saying otherwise.
I hear you. Im actually saying the opposite. I don’t think CB sends scores. Or info. If they did, my kids would not have gotten the junk they got!
I never thought they sent scores. They expressly say they don’t so that would be overt fraud. What I wondered is if they are finding a way to infer range to colleges, violating the spirit of their promise not to share score data. Since I wasn’t getting an easy answer here I started Googling and there are quite a few places where its suggested they do share ranges with schools, but most are short on specifics. There’s been a few lawsuits about it, usually settled privately. One site claimed, and I have no idea if this is credible, that they accomplish this by sending the colleges the names of those who opt in in file “batches” and it’s “understood” by colleges that the batch order correlates to score range (i.e. batch X is 1,200-1,300, etc.). Or perhaps they used to until the lawsuits deterred it, but since they were settled out of court it is impossible to know.
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We kept all of our youngest kid’s college mail in a bin (well, a box from a case of Sam Adams). It was overflowing, and we just put it out for recycling yesterday. I should start a separate thread, since we made a spreadsheet of all the mail she received, what type of mail, which colleges…
Back to the original question, I am almost certain that colleges can purchase info for certain score ranges, as well as demographic info. While Harvard sends info to plenty of kids that have almost no chance of admission, I have never heard of the 1000 PSAT kid receiving Harvard mailings, while the 1400 PSAT does.
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I think a thread about your spreadsheet would be an interesting read!
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Yes they can. One AO told us the cost per contact. I can’t remember the exact value but it was something like 60 cents per name and you can pick and choose scores from certain demographic groups.