<p>My daughter received phone calls from both the dean of admissions and the president of one of her schools. On admitted students day, she was invited to the home of the president and the president spent a half hour talking with all of us. We were pretty impressed by the personal attention. However, can’t tell yet if it’s pushed her toward choosing that college…we’re still waiting for her decision!</p>
<p>I find this thread ironic…I think if my daughter had gotten a little more attention from Lafayette, she may have decided to go there. She did get the nice personalized acceptance letter, but after that, nothing. She even e-mailed them a couple of times about conflicts with the accepted student day and never received a response. To her, Gettysburg seemed just right…not too excessive, but she felt like they were really interested in her and enthusiastic about the school. American University and Susquehanna University were the two places that seemed a little excessive to her. She is still getting e-mails from American, and she sent in her response card over 2 weeks ago.
I was surprised to read in the article how far into the waitlist Lafayette went last year. I wonder if this is the case at most of the LAC’s of this size?</p>
<p>The solicitations actually made it more difficult for my son. One school, in particular, was so kind that it made it hard for S to turn it down (school was my favorite). The school had him for a scholar’s visit, treated him to a t shirt and candy and had a wonderful admissions counselor.</p>
<p>The school he chose did little recruiting (couple of phone calls and post cards). What contributed to the choice was the president coming over to us in the dining hall and chatting with s (this was not an admitted student’s visit so I think the meeting was chance). Sitting in on classes and chatting with students sold the school.</p>
<p>Interestingly, S has covered an instrument case with the decals sent by several colleges and wears the t shirts he got from 2 of the schools!</p>
<p>It’s just “marketing” in our opinion, but that’s what H and I do for a living. Some schools are better at it than others. We loved the school that offered a personalized campus tour to admitted students. The tour guide just happened to have the same major that my D wants to pursue. We hated the LAC that bombarded us with weekly phone calls and letters from alumni that began in February. It became very annoying!</p>
<p>We don’t like the endless letters and emails, but they will come to an end after May 1.</p>
<p>We do like the phone calls when they come from articulate informed students. We don’t like them from admissions, or from students who really do not communicate well. My son has had some lengthy discussions with students and they were very helpful and very honest. If the calls are only about how great xyz school is and it isn’t 100% honest, one can see through that very quickly. We like to hear the good, the bad, blemishes and all!</p>
<p>I appreciate marketing in the form of students and parents who participate without pay. I am not above asking if the caller is compensated. Paid for marketing is dispensed with as quickly as I am able.</p>
<p>One exception to my rule: contact with faculty. One might argue that faculty are being compensated to participate in marketing, but my experiences thus far have been that they transcend the ‘pitch’, and discourse with honesty and insight. At least, this was the case when we spoke with faculty as part of scholarship processes. </p>
<p>On the other side, I placed a couple of calls to Northeastern while arranging class visits for my daughter. In each case the departmental bureaucracy funneled me to the department head to arrange the details. I spent most of each conversation apologizing to the prof for being involved in the abuse of their time. Each prof was gracious, but I came away with a strong opinion that the marketing/bureaucracy at the school was out of control and incompetent.</p>
<p>Message to marketeers: Do not abuse your core wealth, the prof’s. Activities other than teaching and research will exact a price in their core values.</p>
<p>I’m an international student going to Kalamazoo in the fall. I was a bit surprised when I got less than one or two sentences of “personal touch” in my acceptance letter and any further “sales pitches” after that. K turned out to be my only (edit: affordable) option in the end, but I what surprised me was that a larger AND less competitive institute did far more to “woo” me. I though if at all any, K, being so small, would be the college that would put as much of a personal touch as possible.</p>
<p>Anyway, sanity prevailed. I made my decision based on the college’s merit and fit rather than what the adcom did or didn’t do. :)</p>
<p>I still have to say that the best incentives to “woo” a student is a great financial aid and a free visit day (where they pay for travel). Personal messages and calls be damned, I throw those away and can barely care about alumni. Money and a free visit won me over.</p>
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<p>For us last year, the letters from universities stopped abruptly, and were soon replaced by letters from ITT Technical Institute, Western Career College, an art academy, a culinary institute, and Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, among others. We’re still getting letters from an aviation school.</p>
<p>Personally, I liked the phone calls from students. Both Northwestern and UNC-Chapel Hill had students call me, and I had an enjoyable time talking to them. Unfortunately, by the time the UNC student called me, I had already decided not to attend - too expensive (OOC) - but it was still a nice gesture and I found the student welcoming and friendly.</p>
<p>Personal touches on admissions letters, to me, were also appreciated. Macalester, which is a fairly small school, had handwritten statements (“good job, X; we loved your essay!”). The only thing my parents and I found a little odd was when we got a few letters to them basically saying that it was a great school and that they should send me there, regardless of the cost. My mom read them and was went “…okay…”</p>
<p>I stopped getting letters a few weeks ago, but I still get 1-2 emails every day from NeverHeardOf University saying “apply now! Your application is ready!” I don’t even open them; I just delete them, but it’s good to hear that they will (hopefully) stop sometime in the near future. Still, it’s much better now than right after I had taken the PSATs…that was brutal - 15-30 emails a day. But I digress.</p>
<p>I love getting sold on Colleges, but part of the sale is the personal touch. The two goals of a college in wooing are to prove they are the best option for your future and to prove they are the best option for your college experience. That takes both a hard sell and a personal touch.</p>
<p>At Top Pick University, we went from being accepted and enrolled with an affordable package offer to an admit-deny in very short order. The finaid people wanted verification and then re-verification and then an anal exam into all our business loans. It suddenly became clear to us when the coach told us that the yield was too high and they had to get rid of 60 students. I imagine D’s replacement came in with wealthy parents and lower test scores. The cheap ****ards did not even give us back our deposit. The college president had to resign,over shenanigans involving a lawsuit by a contractor. Good for him.
On my own initiative, I took all the relevant paperwork to Second Pick University and met with the financial aid office, telling them about my understanding of how Top Pick wanted to structure our financial aid picture and re-evaluate our business debt, hiding nothing in the process.If we were doing something incorrect on FAFSA reporting, we did not have the resources to pay more for school than the package that was originally offered. Vindication was the result, and was the result for all the other match and safety schools.
I never did understand how schools managed yield when they overbooked admissions and then assumed that a certain number would not report,but that may be a subject for another thread.
We did get an offer for three free airplane tickets from a top ivy to meet with the coach who himself was a silver medalist at the Olympics. We knew so little about colleges then that we had no clue why they might be interested in our daughter. If I had known about this website,I am sure that we would have taken the trip. I feel like an idiot for not trying to persuade D into taking advantage of the offer</p>
<p>I thought I should add, I received an email from an international Brandeis student in the Lerman-Neubauer fellowship program (to which I was also accepted), which was really appreciated, but I still chose to decline Brandeis. As I live in the UK, it takes a long time for mail to get from/to me to/from colleges, and just 3 days ago I received a lovely hand-written note from the head of the L-N program. It made me feel absolutely awful, because I feel like I would have really loved being in this program at Brandeis, although I am thrilled with my choice to go to UVA instead. Maybe it would be sensible to stop sending stuff after April 15th or something, so that students didn’t feel this way?</p>
<p>As the parent of an accepted student at Lafayette, we appreciated the personal contacts from the school beginning with the acceptance letter. S had a tough decision to make and I think the Laf. contacts helped reassure him that he was not wrong to decline his first choice school. When the parent of a current student from our area left a brief message on our answering machine, I looked up her email address and corresponded with her. And Lafalum from CC has been a valuable resource when I was stressing over his decision. The interaction that we witnessed between students and staff/faculty during our most recent visit leads me to believe that S will continue to experience the personal touch when he becomes an enrolled student.</p>
<p>In contrast, Franklin & Marshall showed little “love” and moved to the bottom of S’s choices. Denison, which had been somewhat of a safety school, did a nice job of making him feel wanted</p>
<p>I was a recipient of the personal touch deal. I got tired of the phone calls, but now I sort of miss the mail. I did love the fact that the college I’ve enrolled in left a little note complimenting me on how well-written my essay was. It’s the small things that make you proud of your college!</p>
<p>My mother said she was very comforted by a pretty generic (but well written) letter to my family assuring her that I will be in good hands and will also have a fantastic education. To me, it didn’t help much, because international mail is so slow, we got the mail only after I paid the deposit!</p>
<p>I love getting mails from colleges and them making me feel special. I agree that at small schools like Lafayette, you do get personalized attention compared to State U when you enroll (not just in recruiting). So, it is fair since you are getting a taste of the real thing. I do not see it as a “marketing ploy,” as them being out to get your money. They just want to attract the best students. For instance, Lafayette gave me a substantial financial aid package and I’d be paying very little going there. If they wanted money, they would not have bothered to lure me at all but instead would go after all their rich students but that’s definitely not the case.</p>
<p>Even though I did not choose Laf, and did not fill out the candidate card, I got a very nice letter from them saying something like “we assume you are going somewhere else and we wish you best of luck.” Compared to College X, which said “you did not fill out the candidate reply card so we withdraw your admission and if we gave you financial aid, we withdraw that too!”</p>