Tell your kids not so check that box at the testing center. My kids didn’t get any mail whatsoever.
The colleges aren’t basing these mailings on grades or any knowledge of the kid beyond scores. They want many to apply so they can reject a bigger percentage of applicants and see their selectivity ranking go up.
If the kids don't sign up for the spam, it will be very limited. We get very little. Any that has arrived has been because a kid signed up online at that school, vs from testing spam..
Yep - we actually joke with DD about her “stalker” schools.
Univ of Oregon sent her a B-Day card and that got her attention. Reid sends something almost daily and Tulane has taken a liking to her as well as a gazillion others. She is collecting the ones that have given her an offer of a free application
received the UChicago “cat” mailing last week. I asked and she did not mark the check for college info on her test. She did finally get something from a school she is considering, U of Arizona. She has the correct scores and it has a fantastic BFA.
UChicago is going to keep doing it.
UChicago is at the level where it is competing for top applicants with Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. Unfortunately, almost every halfway decent high school student in America already knows all about Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, hears about them every day from their parents, teachers, other students, movies, television, and already dreams of going to them. HYP are the three great ancient Ivies, while Stanford is the California dream with high profile athletics to add to its academics. Advertising wouldn’t add much for any of them. The whole world advertises them every day.
UChicago isn’t an Ivy, doesn’t have D1 sports, and what’s worse, it has a boring name that doesn’t stick in the mind (it should have been named Rockefeller University, but it wasn’t). For recognition, all it has is great academics, a beautiful campus, lots of Nobel Prizes - not things which will be known to a high schooler unless someone tells them.
UChicago wants to be on every good student’s radar to the same level as those other top schools. It wants top high schoolers to automatically think HYPSMC instead of HYPSM. It wants those top students to hear other students talking about the gothic quadrangles and the gargoyles. It wants their parents to know about the place.
So it needs to keep getting the word out, because every year there is a brand new crop of high schoolers to reach.
University of Chicago - tons and tons of mailings - and my son is not interested, nor ever was.
I think there ought to be a national ‘mail back day’ when we all conspire to send U Chicago the stacks of mailings received. That mail room would really be the place where fun died. :))
QUOTE: If the kids don’t sign up for the spam, it will be very limited. We get very little. Any that has arrived has been because a kid signed up online at that school, vs from testing spam…
Well, my kids have not even tested yet and they get crushed ( I am the OP ) Surprising though that so many say Chicago, as we have only had 1 -2 pcs from them.
For those whose kids did not check the box at a standardized test, how do you think they got on a list? Naviance?
University of Chicago is a stellar school, too bad their marketing is turning people off.
My daughter was peppered with mailings from UChicago and Vanderbilt to name a few. Because of the info, she became interested in Vandy. She wouldn’t even had known about it otherwise as no one she knew went from her high school. Happily, she is now going into her senior year at Vanderbilt!
I see the UofChicago is trying to get their name in peoples heads and on their lips, but at this point it is not putting there in a good way. It seems as we are all making fun of the volume of mailing and still call it “the place wherebfun goes to die”. I wonder if their marketing strategy will eventually backfire?
Back in the day–2007/8–WUSTL was notorious for the frequency of its mailings.
That was before the U of C got a new admissions director and changed from the Uncommon Application to the Common Ap. When that happened, the U of C started pushing for more applicants to reject and thus boost its apparent selectivity for the USN&WR rankings.
U of Chicago here, too. And Rice, lots from Rice. The joke at our house is that our son gets more mail than everyone else combined. :))
Another vote for Chicago. By far. And I don’t find it clever or cute, just annoying-S reads very little of the snail mail. Not applying.
When I was young before internet and call waiting somehow Mt. Ida College got my phone number. At that time it was a 2 year school which I had no interest in and it didn’t have a major I would like. They called almost every day between 4:30 and 5:30. My father used to get so annoyed and told them I was going to go there but they ruined it by calling daily.
My dd18 has been getting college junk mail since starting 9th grade though she didn’t take her first college test until the 10th grade PSAT. We get tons of Vanderbilt and UChicago. I’ve noticed several from Reed after finding out my fil went there for a year (around 1958). We tend to get 10-20 college letters the majority of days. At first dd was excited but the novelty wore off way before she was even thinking about college.
My mailman will love us for a long time. My kids are 4 years apart so no end in site. In one day dd may get Harvard, RPI, UConn, 2 year only school, for profit school etc - There is definitely no way the mailings have anything to do with her test scores, expressed interests etc.
Miami U., Kenyon and College of Wooster. Do not live in Ohio.
We’ve seen quite an uptick in physical and electronic mail recently. There was a lull for a while during the summer. It seems like these new mailings are either postcards (single page) or “books” (many pages). She’s had a couple of phone calls as well. Not a lot from UChicago like in the past. Northwestern is back along with plenty of Reed/Williams/Smith/etc and then many lesser known colleges. I think that a lot of the physical mail from top schools is triggered by her clicking on links in “feeler” email from them (what kid wouldn’t be flattered by email from, say, Caltech or MIT, and those clicks are tagged to the specific piece of email sent to them == very effective marketing tool).
What’s funny is that her top choice school doesn’t send her much mail. She’s been to their website numerous times and knows all about their dorms, majors, minors, etc. Maybe their marketing analysis says, we’ve got her in the bag, and so it doesn’t think she needs more advertising.
As odd as the bombardments are, I find it even more bizarre when unsolicited acceptances and scholarships arrive in the mail. One of my kids (who had good-but-not-great GPA/ACT) started but didn’t finish applications to Kentucky & Florida State, yet got accepted by both, including an out-of-state-tuition waiver and extra scholarship from FSU.
And I recall decades ago, when I was a high school senior, I got an acceptance letter from acollege I’d never heard of (St. Joseph’s of Indiana) even though I was a lazy jock with a 2.3 GPA.
Big week for BU.
Wash U & U of Chicago are the offenders in our house. Both would be reach schools for my DS, but he has no interest in either. The nicest piece of mail he got last year was from Truman State. It was a birthday card that was signed by everyone in the admissions office. However, he had spoken to the area rep and attended the presentation at his High School. Truman is his safety.