I am a parent of boy/girl twins. They attend public high school. They have both taken pre-ACT and PSAT, but neither has taken SAT or ACT yet.
Suddenly, we are receiving a lot of unsolicited college mail. The weird thing is that S20 receives about 3 times as much as D20. Does anyone know how the algorithm works? Where are colleges even getting their info? From the College Board? Is this all based on PSAT data (S scored a little higher than D)? I don’t know what other metrics anyone else would have for them.
Does this mean colleges want boys more than girls lately?
Does it mean anything at all?
Today S20 received 9 pieces of mail from random colleges. D20 received 3. Weird.
Just an FYI…it’s marketing junk mail…and doesn’t mean at all that the schools are “interested” in your kid, or even that your kid has the potential to get accepted.
They probably checked a little box when they took the PSAT.
Just get a box, and put all the mail in it. Then recycle. Our kids got tons of mail. One started getting it after 8th grade and hadn’t taken any standardized tests.
The combo of the higher PSAT and his being male probably is the reason, unless they took different classes and entered all that into the PSAT form (some kids do, some don’t).
While it doesn’t mean a lot to get marketing materials, they do target them to kids who may qualify academically and who meet certain criteria they may be looking to get more of.
True. But my two got mail from very different colleges based on very different academic records and ECs. CB loves kids to fill out all their classes, interests and of course uses their scores if the kid checks that “send my info to colleges” box.
Getting mail of course doesn’t mean a kid is getting in (especially when it comes form one of those sub-10% admit schools), but colleges don’t waste their money if they can avoid it, either. Look at the UNC lawsuit right now - they send marketing mail to x race kids from x state with x scores but not y race unless in a different state, etc.
That mail IS targeted, to varying degrees. It would be ridiculous if it weren’t given the tools available.
My twins received tons of mail too. We saved some to burn in the firepit on May 1. They read very little of it - most is useless. That said, my son DID miss applying for a scholarship for his major at the school he ended up attending. When we asked a classmate how he knew about the scholarship, he said it was in a mailing (but that was after acceptance).
My D didn’t get a lot of unsolicited mail from reaches (with the usual main exception of Chicago), but she got a LOT of stuff from colleges that were totally off her radar where in many cases she would have been eligible for significant merit. Although these weren’t of interest to her, I can imagine such mailing might be useful to some students in raising awareness of possible places to get merit…especially those not on CC!
The volume of incoming mail went up noticeably after a good ACT score (compared to a fairly average PSAT score where she hadn’t prepared at all for the exam.)
There was exactly one college that she received unsolicited mail from that she applied to - Tulane (ended up pulling the app before she got a decision).
I told my kids not to check the box or give any info after the oldest got all that mail.
College do this to convince more to apply so their selectivity rankings improve. It doesn’t mean anyone will be accepted. Just that your scores met a benchmark. The mailings are basically meaningless.
It is never mentioned on CC but maybe one of your classmates punked you and sent your info to the college.
Some places buy cheap lists of names. My son was still getting mail from a test prep site eight years after he earned a perfect score. Our zip code has plenty of students that pay big money to boost standardized test scores. Maybe it works for them.
S20 also receives lots of mail and e-mails these days. What’s rather interesting is that lots of his mail comes from the very same zip code. When you get three envelopes with the same stamp on the same day, it makes you wonder how much “coincidence” it is. In his case it’s an agency (in VA) sending out mail in college specific envelopes for colleges in NY.
Some of his college e-mails refer to his PSAT, and I am quite sure this contributed to the recent craziness. Many of the unsubscribe links lead to web pages that have extremely similar look and feel. I think he has noticed 3 or 4 of different designs. It’s entertaining but completely meaningless otherwise.
We got a letter from Swarthmore today which basically said they got our name and address from college board. College Board doesn’t give out scores but they do give out percentiles so that’s why your S is getting more than your D.
D2 didnt score well on the psat. But she did check pre-med. She got lots of mail, including from Chicago .
D1 conveniently avoided the unsolicited mail from the usual suspects. At the time, she was thinking law school but instead of choosing that, she checked ‘legal studies.’ Hoo-boy. She got postcard mass mailings from trade tech colleges, cosmetology and stewardess schools, etc. Pretty amusing. And from all sorts of 4th tier colleges. And phone calls from those.
They’re just mailings. Unless you requested a package, don’t be fooled.
We haven’t found the mail too bad. Maybe it’s the region we live in, or maybe she ticked or didn’t tick the right boxes, but she hasn’t received an excessive amount. In addition, most of the mail she has received has been from either local schools or schools she has looked at or visited or ones with similar profiles to those. She files the ones she cares about away and tosses everything else. We’ve not really seen any ridiculous mismatches.
Email, however, is a completely different beast. It’s the emails that kill me. I’ll go into daughter’s email to look up something for her, and I can’t ever find what I need because it is lost among the hundreds of spam mailings from colleges. Things like “Hurry Priority Housing closes tonight at midnight” or emails announcing scholarship deadlines she doesn’t qualify for. The thing is these are all from schools she didn’t even apply to. Glad to know she can reserve housing for a school she didn’t even get into!
@chb088 We just received something from Swarthmore today, too.
I imagine some of the elites, have a target market, but as we all know, most of those wont even get in.
We saved all of the marketing materials D18 received and after she committed to Amherst College, we had a small bonfire in the fire pit to celebrate. We will do the same for the little sister. I mean,come on. I have to enjoy this last trip down the college search aisle <:-P
