<p>I like this idea. My son was a NMSF and we were overwhelmed by the amount of recruiting material. We still have boxes of the stuff around here even though we threw out a lot along the way. Yale was even so helpful as to send him a course catalog. </p>
<p>We were savvy enough to understand it meant nothing but many people are not. I think the colleges should be required to have a clearly visible disclaimer on the recruiting material that states, “This material does not imply that you have a great chance of admission to this institution. Here are the statistics from our last freshman class: 90% were class valedictorians, average SAT 1500, etc. Admission is based upon a series of data points including your SAT, GPA, EC, etc.” A disclaimer like those drug companies are required to do makes sense to me. People need to be able to make an informed decision on this stuff. We all know kids who over-reached with all their applications and were left with little to no choices. Not everyone has access to a decent GC.</p>
<p>WHat I don’t get is my dd’s mail. Because the College Board and the ACT shortened my dd’s name in different ways, I can tell which service gave her name out. NOw she has the same GPA for both 3.94 Uw/4,08 W. But the big difference is that she didn’t do very well on the PSAT- around 60% level but is doing very well on the ACT. We also live in suburban DC now so we are not in an area that is considered underrepresented. Bu she is getting mail from top colleges like Princeton, University of Chicago, Vanderbilt, etc. and they are all using the College Board info. Now realistically, with the ACT scores, she may be in the running for those colleges, but they don’t have that info. They just now that she got middling PSAT scores and has a high GPA. She isn’t interested in those schools anyway but I have to think that they are just trying to lower their acceptance rates.</p>
<p>The problem with your proposed disclosure statement is that it runs directly contrary to Harvard’s stated goal (as well as to the unstated goal you accuse it of having).</p>
<p>Fitzsimmons doesn’t want high school students saying to themselves “Why should I apply to Harvard? I have no chance.” For every 100 kids who said that, 99 might be right, and the hundredth would have that glorious, unique writing voice that might turn into Flannery O’Connor’s, or a passion for insects like Edwin Williams’, and THAT kid would be at the top of the pile even if his or her grades and test scores were all in the bottom quartile of Harvard’s class. What’s more, Harvard is so rich that it can afford to pay some smart young person for three or four days just to read those 100 extra applications and bring the 1 to everyone’s attention.</p>
<p>From Harvard’s standpoint, it’s holding up it’s end of the bargain just fine, and whatever transitory disappointment 99 kids feel when they ultimately get rejected is not such a horrible price to pay for finding that one unique kid. And I guess I agree with Harvard. </p>
<p>Of course, the premise of the argument is that the one unique kid would somehow be lost if Harvard doesn’t rescue her from a life of drudgery in the honors program of her state flagship, or maybe Johns Hopkins, and that’s awfully unlikely to be the case. What’s more, as I am sure Dean Fitzsimmons would acknowledge, Harvard is less than perfect at identifying the geniuses in its applicant pool. Plenty slip through the mesh. Harvard is also less than perfect at nurturing them once they get there, but that’s another story; no place is perfect in that regard.</p>
<p>ACT also shares the information with colleges. S2 scored well and has been receiving college info accordingly. S1 did poorly and the college info received in the mail reflected the lower score.</p>
<p>I agree that colleges should send out the accepted stats in their mailings, though I have a sneaky suspicion that they rather enjoy all the monies coming in for application fees.</p>
<p>Well, there you go. You’re admitting that Harvard doesn’t give a crap about raising kids’ expectations and causing them to overreach–not just with Harvard but in their whole list of schools, that may be skewed because of the solicitations.</p>
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<p>I’m glad you made these arguments and saved me the trouble…because the whole finding the diamond pitch can be easily countered with this.</p>
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<p>Well, since it is just that rich, why doesn’t it use that money to go seek out those literary geniuses to be, and those potential presidents from Des Moines? A more effective way to find these gems might be to send letters to teachers and community leaders instead of the students themselves, asking them to identify or suggest any truly remarkable young people that they have come across. I bet targeting in this way would help them zoom in on the truly amazing hidden students much more efficiently than going through thousands of applications in which real talent may or may not shine through.</p>
<p>I get all sorts of advertisements and promotions for things I don’t need, shouldn’t buy, and can’t afford. At least now, when kids get this kind of mail, the information about these schools and the difficulty of admissions is readily obtainable. With the internet there is CC, CDS, and all sorts of other message boards and sources of data. USNWR and other such college references comes out on supermarket shelves. Just listening to the evening news or glancing at a newspaper at the proper time and you will see how selective some of these schools are. I can’t believe many people getting these promotions are incapable of doing even a little research.</p>
<p>When I was a kid in the 70s and I got promotional material from schools, there was pretty much no way for me to check and compare how hard it was to get into one school verses another. Getting this type of mail was not as typical as it is now, I don’t think, but it was not something I discussed with my friends as I recall. We sort of had a vague notion that some schools were harder to get into than others. A lot of schools I got mail from I had never heard of. And I don’t remember my guidance counselor really knowing much about college admissions, and I went to a pretty upscale public school. What I do remember were a lot of completely false rumors about admissions to certain schools - for example that it was so much harder to get into Stanford from California than from outside California, and that you needed much higher test scores for Stanford than most Ivy League school, both of which were completely false,but which were regarded as gospel around my high school. I don’t think anybody bothered to check it out, or even imagined it was possible to check it out.</p>
<p>Many people seem to assume that elite colleges are targeting their marketing based primarily on kids scores. I think it is much more sophisticated than that. Just as important is the zip code, which is linked to all sorts of income and preference data.</p>
<p>I would never assume that a letter from Harvard meant they thought my kid could get in. I think it means that she got a decent score on a standardized test, and that we live in a neighborhood that has the types of families that they are trying to reach out to. </p>
<p>We live in CA and kids go to public schools. Families here tend to love the UC system, and many believe that a UC is ALWAYS a much better deal than any pricey expensive school. We have many many friends that tell their kid "You can go to any school you want-as long as it’s a UC. The super-stars will go to Berkeley or UCLA. And many of the kids want to stay in CA for weather reasons. Plus, if they want to stay close to home, there’s a UC available. If they want to be far from home, there are plenty of options that are 6,8 or 10 hours drive away, but still in CA.</p>
<p>So, elite colleges market very specifically target those people with the mail. It explains the financial aid program for upper-middle class families, and is very eye-opening for many people in the 100,000-180,000 income range. </p>
<p>The elite schools used to be for the wealthy, then they offered great financial aid to low-income families. I think now they realize that to increase diversity any more, they need to get more upper-middle class families to at least consider applying. My dd could have gone to UCLA or Berkeley and been extremely happy there. But, she wanted to go to the east coast, and we had no idea that we might qualify for some aid, and that when our younger dd started college we would definitely qualify.</p>
<p>So, I appreciated their mail! We never thought it meant dd had a great chance, but we learned a lot about their generous financial aid, and learned about things like faculty:student ratio and class sizes and research opportunities and things that were very important to her.</p>
<p>When Princeton broke into Yale’s computer system to check on whether some students applying to Princeton had been accepted at Yale as well, one of the students was Lauren Bush (niece of GWB). I’m sure it was ONLY because High-Minded Princeton thought Lauren Bush was one of those diamonds-in-the-rough from Des Moines!</p>
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