Colleges send some minimum rules to marketing companies (GPA ranges, test scores ranges) and these companies buy cheap mailing lists every chance they get. Sometimes you notice patterns: you show interest in JHU on Parchment and within a month you receive ads from ALL colleges in Maryland. They should not influence your list, but I can tell you that my son didn’t even consider U of Chicago and Columbia partly/mainly because of their aggressive mail campaign. I am not saying my son could have had a good chance there, but like everyone else, he had his list of reach schools. We still spent some money on registration fees, but not on these two!
Aggressive mailing was a big turn off for my daughter too.
With the schools my kids were interested, they went on the websites and requested info…