Today my DD’18 received a piece of unsolicited mail from Tulane University. It was addressed specifically to her and it read:
Dear “DD’18”,
The fact that you are holding this piece of paper means two exciting things: your final year of high school is on the horizon and you have achieved priority consideration when you apply to Tulane. As a priority consideration applicant, you’ll receive some fantastic benefits:
*no application fee * automatic consideration for partial merit scholarships ranging up to $32,000 per year * the opportunity to interview with an alum (if you apply EA or ED)
Blah, Blah, Blah and a page of reasons to pick Tulane.
As this is not our first ride on the college admissions merry-go-round, we recognize that this letter is really a fishing expedition for Tulane. Because…literally EVERYONE (first year freshman) who applies to Tulane receives those aforementioned benefits, there is nothing priority consideration about it. No one pays an application fee, everyone is automatically considered for merit and anyone can request an Alum interview. This is not the first letter that one of my kids received touting priority status, etc. DD’16 received one from Rensselaer and there have been others that went immediately into the circular file.
My question is…why are Universities and Colleges allowed to get away with this misleading advertising? There are students and parents out there who don’t realize that this does not mean anything special. That this school hasn’t really singled your kid out and is super interested in them. There are all sorts of laws protecting the consumer, why is this permitted to happen?
Is there anything wrong in what they said? Your daughter does not have to pay an application fee and will be considered for merit scholarships.
The grocery store calls me a Valued Customer. Regal Cinema thinks I’m a Loyal Customer (do they not know that sometimes I go to another theater?). Some places I’m a Preferred Customer. I wonder how those common folk feel?
It’s the bold highlight priority that is misleading. The word priority means " that fact or condition of being regarded or treated as more important * the right to take precedence or to proceed before others" . If everyone is receiving the same benefit then then it is nothing “priority” about it. There was no special code or way to indicate on the application that it is “priority consideration”.
She won’t be applying…she isn’t even in their stat range, lol.
My youngest starts university in September, so I guess that the deluge of mail from universities has ended. We did of course receive two such deluges, one for each daughter. I had a sort of mixed reaction.
On the one hand I agree with the OP. This is a slick advertising campaign waged by professionals aimed at teenagers.
On the other hand, this allowed our kids to see an ugly aggressive marketing campaign in an situation where we the parents were available to talk to them about it and ask then about it. Both of my daughters were able to see through the slick advertising, and understand why all these schools really wanted them to apply. This knowledge of the world will probably help a bit going forward when they get confronted by other slick advertising campaigns when we are no longer there to help.
On balance, I think that my daughters learned enough from the experience to make it worth the cost.
The whole system has gone haywire. Companies that publish magazines and guides make big bucks by ridiculously thin-slicing such distinct and all encompassing entities as colleges and universities into ranking systems, whereby significant changes in yield result from moves of only a few ranking positions. The guides are such big money makers that US News & World Report has morphed into just a rankings outfit. (For those of you not in the know, it used to be an actual magazine that you could buy at a news stand and subscribe to.)
Given that reality, universities are operating in a perfectly rational manner to hypermarket themselves and do all they can make themselves look good. Failure to do this is, at its most benign, demoralizing for the whole school community and, at its worst, potentially fatal to the university itself. Not a lot of research money, donor, money, or high tuition paying families are interested in giving money to lower ranked colleges. (I could name some examples of colleges in deep trouble in recent years, but that would be rude.)
One final thought: why should caveat emptor not apply in this situation?
@labegg, if you’re throwing away applications to Tulane and RPI, I hope it’s for a better reason than a marketing letter that you received: A lot of kids would be thrilled to have the opportunity to go to such places!
I’ll assume that you are done belaboring your point since if you’re just looking to debate semantics, I’m only going to close the thread. It’s marketing - pure and simple. My Starwood Rewards card tells me that I am a “Preferred Guest.” What makes me “preferred?” I signed up for the loyalty program. LOL. File it under “It is what it is” and move on.
Tulane got a new VP of Enrollment Management/Dean of Admission and they have been tweaking their admissions process. Last year they offered alum interviews to ED applicants. This year they will offer alum interviews to ED and EA applicants. They are making other changes too (like no longer doing the informal rolling admissions, but instead having 2 set early release dates). So, don’t make assumptions about the wording of a mailing based on past experience.
The part I take issue with is that “you have achieved” priority consideration. I think that’s misleading because it gets families’ hopes up. The more who apply, the lower their acceptance rate is, right? I don’t like colleges using families that way.
@NJDad68 We are not throwing away applications simply because they are marketing material but because, thanks to CC, among other places, we know that they (my students) are not in the appropriate stat range for acceptance at some of the schools or that the schools are not a financial feasibility or any number of other reasons that make a school a bad fit. But, the “heavy” marketing, as everyone seems to want to term it, is definitely a turn off. It makes me wonder what other deceptive language they are willing to use beyond the admissions scenario .
I wouldn’t like it either. It’s misleading and in fact false. There is no priority consideration involved. Glad to know they have a new head of the department.
They usually send a streamlined application that is easier than the common app. That is usually sent to students with certain test scores. Hence perhaps “priority”. Heck Harvard sends out misleading and falsely encouraging mailings as well. Washington University in St. Louis was notorious for killing many trees sending out encouraging mailings.
I wonder if the Dept of Education tracks any of the collegiate advertising materials? As they attempted to protect the consumer with regards to the transparency of cost with the net price calculators?
My son has received this from Tulane as well. I assumed Tulane targets kids above a certain SAT score so that was where the " priority "wording came about.
