<p>My DD is getting concerned,she is a sophomore, A lot of her other Sophomore friends are getting letters from Colleges. She is not. Is there something I need to do to get her name out there? There a few that are better students and athletes than her but the rest are not. She is in top 15% of her class of over 900 students. She is 2 year varsity letterman in her sport with all conference, all district honors as well as academic all conference and academic all state with a 3.85 gpa. 3.6 cumulative. What are we not doing that we need to do? They are getting letters to visit the campus. She is not. Help. </p>
<p>@Momof0807 The biggest source of college mail (at least in my experience with 2015 daughter and 2018 son) is if they check the box/fill in the oval on PSAT/ACT/PLAN tests indicating they want to receive mail. Then it starts. On the ACT, the students can indicate up to four free choices where their test results will be sent. I suspect the mailing lists of students gets swapped around to schools, too.
I’ve also gone to different school websites and asked to be included on their mailing lists. I promise, one way or another, your mailbox and inbox will soon start to overflow with this stuff!</p>
<p>Yes, like the other post said, it’s largely on whether that box was checked on the PSAT. My eldest marked it Freshman year and she got a ton of stuff. It annoyed her so she didn’t mark it Sophomore year and thus, we didn’t get any college mail that year. Once she took the real SAT and the ACT junior year we got overwhelmed with stuff. </p>
<p>Your daughter shouldn’t be concerned. She only a Sophomore and isn’t on the mailing lists yet and that’s not a bad thing. If she’s really desperate for the mail, get her a Cappex account and start listing colleges she’s interested in. She’ll be getting a lot of it then.</p>
<p>Those mailings do not mean anything. Without full review of a student’s application adcoms are not going to know if a student is going to be admitted or not. Our younger D opted to get no mailing, so we didn’t get a lot of junk mail/email.</p>
<p>You really do not want the mail. Yes, it can be an ego booster, but really it’s just marketing on the colleges part. Getting mail doesn’t mean your child is being considered or well suited. It means that the school wants to increase the size of its application pool.</p>
<p>we get tons of mail from a select few schools I’m sure others on CC do as well: UChicago and Vanderbilt are two. More recently, Case Western. My child doesn’t even remotely fit the profile for these schools. I can only assume they want to drive up their application numbers so they’ll look more selective. </p>
<p>It would be far better to research schools on your own (CC is great for that) and ask schools that your child find interesting for information. You’ll still get tons of mail but at least you asked for it.</p>
<p>I disagree. The mailings are useful in the sense that they might bring to a family’s attention a previously-unknown college that may turn out to be the perfect fit for a kid. While @oldfort is correct in the sense that getting mailings does not equal insta-acceptance, they can put schools on the radar.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for the input. Her father is an IT guy and very much against giving our info out. I am almost betting that she marked no to the mailings. That is how she was raised. </p>
<p>You could have her create a special e-mail address separate from any family ones, just for college correspondence. I agree there is a lot of junk mail, but will add that my D is attending a college that she found out about through an e-mail. I knew about the college, but hadn’t said anything to her about it because it is so far away. Ironic that is where she ended up!</p>
<p>Are you referring to mail from coaches? My son started to receive correspondence from college coaches when he was a hs sophomore. He was not interested in participating in Div 1 athletics in college but was interested in Div 3. When he applied to colleges that were Div 3 - mostly small liberal arts colleges - they have a questionnaire on their website that gets sent to the coach - fill it out and if they are interested it will generate at least a letter, most likely a phone call from the coach. If they are interested, they will invite your child out to spend a weekend with the team. There are no scholarships given to div 3 athletes but it may be a boost to help your child get into the college. </p>
<p>My younger daughter is getting two copies of every mailing… Different (and incorrect) middle initials in an otherwise VERY distinctive last name. A few colleges have been good matches but for the most part it’s quite random.</p>
<p>My daughter started receiving mail from colleges when she registered to take 2 AP tests as a sophomore. Our letter carrier will be very happy when it stops! It has been really overwhelming and has absolutely nothing to do with her academic record or her interests. A month in, she asked me to deal with it, and 99.9 percent goes into the recycling immediately.</p>
<p>Every once in a while, a high school student posts here to say that the University of Chicago is interested in him or her because they have been sending a lot of mail. My daughter finally stopped getting mail (and stuff! nerd glasses? we got it!) from them every.single.month once their application deadline passed.</p>
<p>My high school freshman took the PSAT this fall and almost immediately started getting mail and emails…Unfortunately he put my email down , ugh… My college freshman got a lot of mail in high school. The only ones that were useful were a couple that waived his application fee based on the test scores he got and also one that he got the summer before senior year that said he was conditionally accepted pending looking at his grades. He didn’t end up at those colleges but he did get accepted and considered them. So I guess sometimes the marketing sort of works.:)</p>
<p>Count your blessings! Once you start getting those college mailings randomly, it is IMPOSSIBLE to stop them. We received letters about undergrad schools when our DS was completing his masters. </p>
<p>My DD quipped “I think I will apply to WashU. I will include ALL the mailings where they tell me I would be the PERFECT candidate for their school.”</p>
<p>I really wanted her to do that! She didn’t have an ice cube’s chance in hell of getting accepted to Wash U. God knows why she got ALL those mailings!</p>
<p>My college sophomore D barely got any mail. My hs sophomore S gets some, but not a ton. He also got an occasional boarding school flyer, whereas my D never got any. D was middle of the pack (probably around 40%); S is top 10%. Don’t know if that has anything to do with it…</p>
<p>You can have ours. Really. </p>
<p>If I had another kid coming through after this one, I’d instruct him or her to opt out of all the mailings. </p>
<p>I wish the colleges would stop these mailings. What a waste of paper! It’s just way too much junk overflowing our trash cans. we don’t even open the letters.</p>
<p>Agree about the mailings. In the snail mail days for college mailings- only a few years ago- son got the most mailings (repeats almost weekly) from a few schools he would never consider. I ended up recycling two paper grocery bags full while in was in college. My favorite mailing was the single red postcard from flagship U- it said “We got your scores and they are good” plus a few more words I’ve forgotten. Son put that one on his bulletin board. </p>
<p>It would have been one thing if the mailings came form colleges my kids were remotely interested in, but they weren’t. 90% were from tiny colleges I’d never heard of that were way, way, way less selective than the ones they were considering.</p>
<p>My daughter’s mailings were from colleges with a full range of selectivity and size, including a few Ivies. Absolutely none of them interested my daughter at all whatsoever. She did get promotional mailings from schools she visited as well, but almost all the mailings were out of the blue.</p>
<p>Think of the letters like you used to think of those AOL discs. The colleges are mostly just trying to increase the number of apps they get (and reject), increasing their selectivity rankings.</p>