<p>haven’t gotten any from Harvard, but tons of stuff from yale</p>
<p>My son received the same letter. I emailed back to inquire about the letter. Truth be told my son’s name was on a list from sat and act. They send these letters to all above a certain score. Harvard feels these candidates meet the cut off score. I would imagine at least 50,000 students receive this letter, even students who don’t stand a chance…More money, lower admit rate…win win situation for Harvard.</p>
<p>I’ve heard Yale actually airdrops tens of millions of pre-stamped applications over heavily populated areas in an attempt to get their admit rate as low as Harvard’s</p>
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You probably heard that from a Harvard sophomore who probably knows the meaning of the word apocryphal.</p>
<p>In fact, current Yale admissions dean Jeff Brenzel chose to reduce the number of viewbooks Yale sends out from 120,000 to 80,000 because of a concern that Yale was encouraging too many people to apply who had no realistic chance. Some of the recruiting effort was redirected toward targeting high-achieving, low-income applicants.</p>
<p>All the Ivy admissions offices are in a growing bind: no one wants to disarm unilaterally, but everyone is getting far more qualified applicants than they can accept. It is past the point where it does much to improve the quality of the entering class – but the rejects are getting better every year.</p>
<p>It’s well-known that the College Board sells its data to schools, which then send these letters to tens of thousands of potential applicants. The letters are sent based on standardized test scores only and do not mean that you: 1. are really a reasonable candidate for admission, and 2. that you will be admitted. Admissions offices have become profit centers as a result of this, in part, and though money is not the only motive, it’s a nice benefit. Yield goes down as well, and school “selectivity” and reputation are enhanced. It’s the student who suffers most because of false expectations. See the article in the NYT Education Life section a couple of Sundays ago (to paraphrase, do these schools really need 30,000 applications to find 2,000 new students?).</p>
<p>The letters sent out by Harvard are usually to broaden their application pool - in other words, the admissions office hopes that individuals who would not have considered Harvard as an option will apply. It’s true that some people who may be underqualified will receive the letters, but I believe that at the core of the recruitment effort is a sincere desire to make Harvard seem like an option for those who may not have considered it for reasons outside of their own control - I know the letter I received did that for me.</p>
<p>And I couldn’t help but comment on this:</p>
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<p>It’s not a marketing ploy. It’s absurd to reduce a college’s recruitment efforts to a desire to lower its acceptance rate. Yes, there are aspects of the admissions process that do have rat race tendencies, but one would have to be a fool to agree with your theory.</p>