My son got a letter from Caltech!

CountingDown
Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:28:52 +0000

I’ve seen people post with wildly varying scores for getting a letter from a highly selective school. In most cases, the schools are trying to cast a wide a net as possible so that they can attract a broad range of candidates and experiences. They probably also calculate that students will gain ~100 points between soph and junior year (or junior year PSAT to SAT) – so what may not look like a super score now may turn into one. What one puts down as an intended major also makes a difference. DS1 put down one major soph year, and a different one junior year. Got dramatically different mail.

I expect that DS2 (a soph) will also hear from many of the same schools DS1 did, though DS2 has an entirely different focus and different scores.

Not to worry – it’s material to look at, get a feel for the schools, and see where your S might be interested. Nothing more. It’s the college version of junk mail. I would suspect that colleges buy mailing lists of kids with scores in various bands, zipcodes, majors, etc. I can’t imagine there’s a mailing for scores of 2300+, for example – probably more like 2000+.