Why bother setting the parents straight? Let them build pride as well as a better understanding.
Turn the negative into a positive and HIRE them as your admin staff. Ask them to buy a bunch of boxes and folders. Create a specific email for them and mercilessly send dozens of request for information. Also, subscribe to google alerts for news about financial aid and statistics.
Tell your parents that will dedicate 20 minutes every Sunday to learn about THEIR progress in analyzing the buckets of paper and emails.
Have a coffee and listen to the exposė. Pretty painless.
What is your explanation for highly selective and already well-known colleges using this method.<<<
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Very simple explanation. Even the most selective schools believe there remain plenty of regional pockets that are underrepresented in their freshmen classes. That is a major difference with schools that are mostly local or regional by design and mission.
“OK, so would you say that schools don’t care about their selectivity? What is your explanation for highly selective and already well-known colleges using this method.”
In our case it seemed like University of Chicago and WUSTL were the two highly selective schools that were bombarding us with materials. The eight Ivies get a lot of free attention because they are Ivies. Stanford, Duke, Michigan, UVA, Berkeley, Notre Dame, Northwestern and Vandy all get publicity from sports. MIT gets a lot of media attention as the best engineering school and because it is next to Harvard.
I think it is a good approach for UofC and WUSTL. They do not get as much media attention and applicants may not think of them as readily as other schools. Both of these schools seem to have focused on their ranking and have worked at marketing a positive image. They do a good job of convincing a lot of students to attend. They each seem to take a differentiated approach that stands out. UofC does a good job targeting eccentric kids and high stats kids who may not fit in at a lot of other schools. Quirky is appealing to a lot of these kids and no other top school targets it, which is the key. WUSTL’s campus is beautiful and very impressive to a 17 year old. If they can get you on campus, they know they have a solid chance. They also did the best job of the presentations of all of the schools we visited. They really try to close the deal on the visit if they can. I think they are smart in their approach. In a lot of ways the Ivies seem to do less marketing than they probably should. I think the could do a better job of reaching top candidates, but the admit rates are so low that they seem to limit it.