<p>After my D's (overseas) school prepares her college app packets--transcripts, etc. What type of mail should be used to send them to the colleges? Is ordinary air-mail good enough? What experience have other internationals had?</p>
<p>D will be applying online to most of her schools.</p>
<p>Not the parent of an international student, but I would suggest sending your package Fed-ex international or other service where you can track your package and its delivery. I would also place a stanmped postcard addressed to your home in the package. Once the admissions department opens the package, they will stamp the card with the date and mail it back out to you.</p>
<p>International delivery would be, IMHO, a much better choice than standard air mail -- unless the cost is completely prohibitive. For international delivery, I've had better experiences with DHL than FedEx, but that's outgoing to another country, not incoming to the U.S.</p>
<p>Pyewacket:</p>
<p>In most cases, it is the postmarked date that is important. Speed is not of the essence unless you have reason to believe that ordinary mail takes up to five weeks. Adcoms usually take a while before they start reviewing files as different pieces come at different times and need to be collated and sorted out. But is is helpful to have proof that the package was sent and capable of being tracked should it go astray, in which case FedEx of DHL are better than ordinary mail. I've also heard that DHL is better than FedEx for international delivery.</p>
<p>Pyewacket:</p>
<p>not an international, but I used to ship bank docs overseas regularly, and we used FedEx and UPS. At the time, both were not inexpensive, but they did arrive on-time. Didn't like DHL's convenience in the US.</p>
<p>fwiw: the docs were almost always going to capital cities.</p>
<p>I depends on the service in the country where you are. Fed-ex worked better for us and although it cost a fortune, everything arrived way ahead of time. The mail service where we are can be extremely slow. Some colleges sent acceptances and financial aid letters promptly using fed-ex or the like. The problem arose with the ones that didn't. You'll see. Sometimes they will email acceptances to internationals. I would recommend after everything is in, that you enquire what their policy is on financial aid and acceptance letters. His USC acceptance took almost 3 weeks to arrive. They posted financial aid results online at one time and the school he had been accepted into and that alerted him to the fact that he had been accepted and to what degree. But he found out about this by watching this forum. Some kids knew what to do. It can be a bit tricky at the end of the process if your mail service is delayed.</p>
<p>My MIL runs a mail service for expats and does business in many countries. Whether your local air mail service is reliable or not depends enormously on where you live! She has found DHL to be consistently excellent. I would urge you, however, to consider asking the school to scan the materials and email them, or FAX them directly, and then snail-mail the hard copies.</p>