Getting a boatload of emails from different colleges across the US…with subjects as " you have impressed us" to “you are among the chosen ones”.
Just wanted to know if any of these have any meaning in regards to the particular student, or they are just generated by mass emailing systems, from colleges picking contacts from the SAT and ACT databases.
Appreciate your responses.
It’s marketing. Read nothing else into them.
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*Just wanted to know if any of these have any meaning in regards to the particular student*
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No.
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*or they are just generated by mass emailing systems*
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Yes.
It means - your SATs don’t suck, apply to our school and help us bump up our rejection numbers so we can also go up in USNWR rankings.
LOL - my son has gotten SO many. Our mail pile has reached about 18 inches high since he took the ACT in June. I’ve noticed they are mostly middling schools that are recruiting higher achievers than their average. OR in a few cases competitive schools that are playing the numbers game looking to get more to apply - looking at you U Chicago, John Hopkins, Notre Dame, and Carnegie Mellon.
You will get buckets of these mailings over the next few months. The schools want more applicants so that they can send out more rejections and as @katliamom said, bump up their USNWR rankings.
I do agree that it is pure marketing – but I will also say that it is worth spending a few minutes to flip through the mailings. My S got a mailing from a college we knew about but just never considered in part because it was pretty close to home. My S read through the brochure and it quickly became clear that the school ticked a lot of boxes for him in terms of size, strength in his major, an urban location which he wanted etc. – so it spurred us to drive for a visit. He was impressed by the school right away and it turned out to be the college that my S attended and loved (and got a great merit package from 
). So keep in mind that every now and then there might be a gem hiding in that pile of junk mail.
It’s marketing, and it does not mean anything other than that your son’s GPA and/or test score were within their range of reasonableness. And it is not just schools looking to increase their standing that send out these mailings and emails. Almost every school advertises to its target audience in the hopes of exciting interest in applying. My son got one from Harvard today.
It’s not just USNews.
Your major can matter. D1 didn’t get from the usual Chicago and that level. In fact, she got mail from a flight attendant school, the local tech inst that now offers a degree of some sort, and the usual low end suspects. At the time, she was interested in law, but we realized she had checked “legal studies” on some form (psat?,) not law.
They are marketing, but most marketing is directed to the customers the seller wants to attract.
Read through the stuff. There may be a code for a free app, or an invitation to a special event.
T told my kids not to check the box at the SAT’s and they received zero mailings.
I will add one thing here…having had 2 kids go through it…i don’t think they are 100% meaningless…my older kid had super strong stats…kid 2 had good but not superstar stats…Kid 1 got WAY more mailings than Kid 2…so there’s some sort of sorting going on.
I agree with SouthernHope’s inference that some sort of sorting is going on.
Students who get a ton of such mailings should feel better about their chances of being admitted to a more selective college.
But does this mean they will have a really strong chance at any particular one of those colleges that sent letters? No.
Here’s what we did with those letters: we filed them in a box, just in case the kids expressed interest in one of those colleges. But they did not open or read those letters when they came. The letters were of more interest to their parents, as we evaluated the fit of the colleges to our kid’s talents and interests.
We did most of the reading and research about colleges. We looked at data about admissions (the “Common Data Set”) for selected colleges. The kids only looked at the info from about a dozen colleges each. My daughter was only interested in “art schools, preferably located in the east.” My son was only interested in colleges “where it’s safe to be a thinker.” Using those rubrics, and considering the kids’ own profiles (test scores, possible college majors), we composed lists of schools for each kid. They vetoed some from our lists. They didn’t add any on their own (though they could have). They prepared their portfolios and wrote their essays. #1 visited NO colleges for admissions purpose prior to applying. #2 visited a dozen, on one large circuit trip to the east.
They each applied to roughly a half dozen colleges, all of which would likely have been acceptable to them. That’s when the sorting by the kids was concluded. The colleges then took their turn. The kids chose the one they liked best from the colleges that admitted them. (Financing wasn’t something they had to take into account. They was our matter.)
Did the early mailings make any difference? Have any impact? I don’t think so. But they got the sorting process under way.
I think they send those messages to kids with SAT/ACT scores in certain ranges. I even think that they target zip codes at times because some of D18’s friends got mail from high end colleges last year even though their scores weren’t compatible.
We like some of the mail. Several have been clever, like the Swarthmore (I think) one a month or so ago saying something like “Don’t read this, it’s a marketing trick”. Others have really nice presentations of the college.
One final note. D18’s top choice sends little mail and the ones she gets from them are for their engineering school (“womengineering”!). She’s not interested in engineering! I said she should contact their local rep and say she’d like to get mail from their Sciences school instead.
Mailings can contain app fee waiver codes, so you should look at them if the college is of interest.
My daughter has been getting college junk mail since 9th grade though the first standardized test she took was psat in 10th grade. Lucky me she graduates this year and younger dd enters 9th grade in the fall so no end in sight. Honestly I don’t think anything matters other than they were able to obtain name/address from some paid mailing list. My daughter gets stuff from all levels - for profit certificate schools through IVY League and not all offer her major. I think it also depends on how much money a school wants to spend on marketing.
We recently got a good laugh at a mail from an art school but my younger daughter did appreciate the free sketch book. My daughter applying to college can’t draw a stick person. I agree at glancing at mail from colleges you may have interest in. I’ve seen a voucher for a free tshirt while touring, free fee waivers for touring etc.
Regarding the junk mail, we had an eye opener a few years ago when we started receiving the college mailings from another kid in our neighborhood who was in the same class as ours. Our kid was NMF, and in the top 3 percent of the class. The other was a good student, but committed to an athletic scholarship at a non-competitive school in the junior year so was not participating in the application process.
Regardless, the mailings were largely identical.
Do the colleges actually know your test scores when they send these emails? I had my daughter create a new email account specifically for college prep. So the only time she’s ever revealed the email address is for her PSATs.
But I thought College Board doesn’t share the PSAT scores with anyone?
It seems as though they must share score ranges so colleges can target mailings. My S19 just took the PSAT for the second time and I wonder if the mailings will change based on his new score, for better or worse.
It is called junk mail for a reason. The school is looking to gin up applications.