Chicago is the absolute worst. I don’t think they care much for trees.
I don’t recall that the son’s current school sent out much junk mail, but he was on their radar after attending a local fair, so there was no need for them to send anything.
The big shock was when he got mail from CalTech. There was no way he was getting in.
The most annoying school when it came to mailings was Baylor. He got stuff from them telling him to apply even as a sophomore in college. And now that he’s a junior, Hofstra constantly sends him email asking him if he would like to transfer there.
Both of my kids had roughly the same test scores, and both were sent mail by tippy tops. Yes, Chicago was the worst. No Ivy would have ever accepted my son in a million years, and my D was rejected by the one Ivy she applied to. It’s so wasteful.
@overbearingmom ,
Those marketing companies are good. We got loads of them. The “letters” they sent to my D were so personalized, so convincing. We almost got swept off our feet ?. We still kept the one from Harvard just for giggles.
D got into a good college that did not send her one single piece of marketing mail.
At the beginning, before it became overwhelming and thus ignored, when it was from a top school one twin would ask if the other got the same mailing. If so, he wasn’t interested. LOL. I threw all college mailings most unopened in a file storage box just in case they ever wanted to look at them again before applying/accepting. After college choice was settled I took the overflowing boxes to recycling and mourned the trees. For 3 kids it filled more than 4 boxes.
One of the reasons that the cost of college is much higher today is because colleges have many more expensive administrative and marketing personnel. Part of their jobs is to getting more students to apply. Ever wonder why UChicago is the most expensive college?
It’s even more confusing to the kids who have stats that are at Ivy/top school level. They have reason to think that the schools are actually recruiting them, and don’t know that their classmates with lower stats are getting the same junk mail.
And it’s surprising that some of these schools tout their commitment to the environment, LEED-certified buildings, composting toilets and yet are single-handedly slaying entire rainforests every week with all that mail!
There was a fortunate exception. Fall of junior year, 2 people mentioned a college to my son. Soon after, We received a postcard, stating there would be a meeting in Miami. Quite a drive, but well worth it. There was a film and a man to answer questions, alumni also came. This U made it to son’s list.
Because my son opted out of receiving college mail, I’m know there were other schools that could have been on his list
Case Western is probably the most prolific for us. They’ve sent at least 5 mailings per week for many weeks. Sometimes we get two or three of those large postcards in one day.
If they really want D so badly, maybe they’ll offer a generous grant.
After my first got deluged, second and third kids opted out. We never took mailings to the first seriously. Clearly colleges are trying to get many to apply who won’t get in so as to keep that acceptance rate down.
Then again, my kids, in the dark ages, only applied to 4 schools. We didn’t need any ideas since the number of applications was low.
I like the mailing. Especially from schools that wasn’t on our radar. My D wasn’t even considering Case Western. She now attend Case. Without the mailings she wouldn’t have considered them. Beloit also sent alot. It wasn’t a fit for my D but I recommend it to someone else and they now attend.
With our middle daughter we saved all the college mail in a box. I’m not sure she read any of it, but it made an impressive pile. Once she had made her college decision we made a funny video of her college decision using all those brochures. It ended with a post-credit scene of her dumping all of the brochures into the recycling bin.
We sorted all those mailers by color, prestige, geography, headlines, claims, artistic qualities, thickness, etc. One favorite was the batch of free applications from different colleges that all arrived within a couple of days, with nearly identical fonts, text, and envelopes. Clearly they all use the same mailing/marketing service.
In the piles of college mailings sent to my daughter was a brochure for the Rose Hulman summer program Operation Catapult. It was in the form of a fold-out cartoon of a Rube Goldberg machine so I handed it to her little brother who was into Rube Goldberg at the time. Daughter saw him studying it and was intrigued. She attended Operation Catapult and it was a highlight of her high school years. She subsequently applied to Rose Hulman and was accepted but went to another college. We would never have known about Rose Hulman or Operation Catapult without that onslaught of college mail.
(For his part, little brother went to Explosives Camp at Missouri S&T when it was his turn for an academic summer program.)
High Point University and the U of Chicago are the worst! So annoying to receive almost daily postcards, books authored by the University president, dvd’s, etc. My son is applying to neither.
My son has Ivyish stats ( scores and grades)— but knows that colleges in the range that he falls into are a reach for everyone – also all the top students at his HS blanket app the Ivies + so the admittance stats, according to naviance are actually worse the common data sets – ( example school with 10 percent admit rate will be a 5 percent rate from his HS. Most kids apply to common app limit of 20 schools) . I think our zip code ( high net worth) plus his stats end up generating lots of mail – not just from the Ivies. Here are the top three overall repeat offenders:
Reed
Butler
U of Chicago
The Ivies that have sent the most stuff are -
Cornell
Columbia
Harvard
Other top colleges that he gets a bunch of stuff from:
My s20 had a bunch of contact with a Dean and a Dept. Chair at a selective LAC. They were adding a new major, his intended major, and he was referred to the dean by one of my clients (an alum) who was familiar with this change at the college and is probably trying to get me to cut my rates for him by doing my kid a favor.
The reason for this background is he has received boat loads of direct mail from this college (and dozens of others), but yesterday he got a letter from the Dean alerting my kid to a new full-scholarship funded by a local employer, Specifically for that new major, and inviting him to both apply to the school and that scholarship (dean knows my kids, stats). Anyhoo, there was a MAJOR typo in the letter. LOL. My son’s name was injected inside a sentence in a nonsensical place. Oops!
I just had to laugh…thinking about all of the hand wringing and proofing, proofing and the proofing of his essays. I showed it to him and he got a chuckle out of it, too. That letter, we will save.
I don’t think sending marketing material to kids who are at or near the stats needed to be considered for acceptance to the school is the issue. Obviously schools can market themselves vigorously if they are hoping to find some potential admits.
It’s the claim that they target kids well below the stats who have basically zero chance of getting in, so they can add a quick rejection and pump up their acceptance stats from 24% to 21%, or whatever.
IF indeed that is what they are doing. I don’t see a lot of evidence for that? But if it’s what they are doing, that’s unethical IMO.