@SDCounty3Mom I suspect that the “information we’ve gotten from the College Board makes us think you’d be the type of student who can contribute” is the average range of salaries in your zip code. My kid has very good test scores and very good grades and we get nothing of the sort. He checked the ‘share my information’ box and everything, but we live in a poor neighborhood so we don’t get loving letters from expensive colleges.
We get four to six postcards a week, mostly from in-state publics and community colleges or colleges we have visited and signed up for mailing lists. The fabled barrage of mail from UChicago has been limited to a single postcard for us.
U Chicago found us too. Both online and snail mail and I know d19 did not check the box asking to be contacted by schools. It honestly makes them look bad to me since they don’t actually know her enough to know her intended major is not at that school. I mean, they can fake the personal touch but that’s a dead giveaway.
And d19’s scores are good but not Yale level good, so they get a huge eye roll from me since I know they really just want our application fee.
@homerdog I toured USC in January w/ my D. My DH is a UCLA grad, so we have always had a thing against USC but now that we don’t live in CA, USC is really the only way to go. IF D gets incredible merit aid, etc. At this point she might apply and see how generous they are. My MIL and SIL have graduate degrees from SC. My MIL would plotz if my D went to school there. We would have to set up boundaries!
I had never really spent much time on the USC campus. I had been to Exposition Park, the IMAX theater when that was new, and some outlying things there, but the actual campus was quite delightful. Buildings seemed new or recently updated, and the older buildings looked great. Some construction going on, but I don’t remember what it was for. The tour started out in a meeting room where an admissions person made it sound so easy to apply, get financial aid, and get in, ha ha. And of course at the cost of the tuition there, they do a pretty good job of getting your kid out of there in four years.
You can catch the Metro rail right there and go all over town. It’s right near downtown LA, so internship possibilities are endless. From what our backwards walking tour guide was saying, it seems that most kids go out of the country to study abroad at some point, if not more than once. We didn’t look at the dorms, but living on campus is a must in the area. If you get to tour USC, there is a Space Shuttle housed there in the museum at Exposition Park. Which I wished we could see, but we relied on SIL to drive us. Once the tour was over, that was it. Let me know if you have any questions.
@ninakatarina Oh my, that’s interesting and a bit depressing. I hadn’t thought of the zip code but you’re probably right. We live in a regular old 3 bedroom house but we are in close proximity to some extremely wealthy households (former MLB star Dave Justice lives in this zip code, and Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn lived here too before his death), and it’s true that my D has a lot of wealthy classmates now that I think about this. My favorite is the one who lives not only in a gated community, but in a community with an attendant at the gate who looks up my name and then prints out an access pass when I arrive. I was so dumb/naive the first time I went there that I stopped in front of this ambiguous pole looking for an intercom or key pad or something, and then I realized oh, there’s a live attendant waiting in this little clubhouse. And my S21 has a friend who lives atop a hill in a gated community where the gate HATES ME and I can try and try and that dang code will not work. I’ve tried sneaking in the back way and have had to resort more than once to calling the mom to ask her to meet me at the gate. They also have a gate around their property. Gates and I hate each other. But I digress…The UChicagos and the USCs probably do want applications (and qualified full-pay students) from my zip code. They should Google-maps my address first though to see what they’re really getting when they send stuff to my daughter…
@homerdog I’ve also been to USC. It’s a hot ticket for kids in my community these days. I feel like they must get 50 applications from our high school alone. I’d always heard it was in a horrible area but I think it’s gentrified through the years, and the science center right there is cool and worth a visit (we enjoyed both the natural history museum and the science center with the space shuttle, and took in an IMAX show too). The rivalry between the LA schools is funny for an outsider like myself…DH has family with degrees from both UCLA and USC and that rivalry is no joke. These guys range in age from 30 to 75 years old and if you diss on their school, the tension rises, even for the old timers (maybe especially for them…). They also are Pac 12 elitists and disparage all the other big sports leagues. A young cousin graduating this year just chose Alabama (gasp!) and they were not pleased. It’s 99% about sports. Keeps them entertained I guess…
Sigh. Off the phone with D in college who is even more stressed about voluminous homework & exams than S19. She had a tough week and needed to unload on mom. Now I could use a cocktail, but sadly it is middle of the day and I don’t drink. I can’t look at pictures from when my kids were in elementary school. Makes me so nostalgic that I start to cry.
@jellybean5 is USC the kind of campus where kids stay on campus because it’s safer (ala University of Chicago)? Is there any nature close by, like really close by, where an avid runner can go for a run? Or it the kind of campus that’s a bubble inside of a city?
@ninakatarina I really think the mail started right after the PSAT scores were released. I don’t know your S’s score but I can see from S19’s mailings and his friends’ mailings that it is that score that’s causing the level of mailings. (Yes! They compare! It’s ridiculous!)
I think kids can self report grades on the College Board website but S19 didn’t do any of that. The only thing the schools have is his PSAT. And I bet it’s not just the possible NMF kids in each state that get the most mailings. It seems like it’s the highest scorers nationally. So, if the student had a possible NMF score for his state but that cut off isn’t that high, I think he still may not be getting mailings from Ivies etc. That part is a guess but seems like the 222s and up are getting those mailings but no one below that. (Our niece in a neighboring town has a 220 and didn’t get the mail that S19 gets.)
My dd has received maybe 5 mailers because I told her to uncheck on CollegeBoard registrations and AP test registrations that you want to hear from programs who are looking for students like you. Makes my recycling so much easier.
@homerdog I would say it’s not really a campus with a lot of greenery. Map Link:
https://web-app.usc.edu/maps/
On the interactive map and you will see all of the green area that surrounds Exposition Park and the Coliseum. Not sure what that is, exactly, but on a map it doesn’t look that bad. The Coliseum is where the 1984 Olympic marathon route ended. So there’s a chance of it being joggable. The rose garden is pretty neat too. For sure the surrounding areas are sketchy!
We had certain mailings after the PSAT scores were released but the onslaught of tougher admit schools like Chicago started literally right after the ACT scores were released. The multiple page letter from Yale takes the cake!
I’ve posted this before, but want to repeat because it’s relevant to this discussion. My son, who had an 1100 on his PSAT has received mail from University of Chicago and Cornell. I don’t know how he got on their lists but it’s a bit ridiculous. These lists mean nothing.
@liska21 - I’m getting panicky and dramatic texts from my college daughter too. I guess it’s that time of year. Actually her texts in the fall when she was still trying to adjust to college life and not happy were almost more stressful than getting through the college search and decision process. She is so far away and it’s hard for me to help. Thankfully this semester is much better but she is still currently overwhelmed with work and everything else.
As for mailings, we don’t live in a wealthy area but we get the most from U. Chicago and Vanderbilt (not that they are going to let S in). We have gotten a variety of mail for both kids, but recently got the first letter from Harvard. It was one of those fake personalized letters and I happened to open it on April Fool’s Day which was great timing. Ha!
Not sure the mailings mean anything. S19 — ACT 36 and PSAT 1480 with SI one point above last year’s cutoff doesn’t get much more than S20 PSAT 1300. And really no more than 9th grade. Mostly emails. The mailings were fun at the beginning of HS but now they just add to my recycling load.
Hm. Maybe @ninakatarina is right. Maybe there is a zip code component. Weird that there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason comparing kids here on CC. In our neighborhood, I know lots of the high stats kids got the exact same Ivy mailings last week. Some kids were bragging about it and S19 told them to relax. It’s just marketing and none of us are getting in. Lol.
A lot from U Chicago arrived after the PSAT/SAT, but ACT yielded some junk mail from each of HYPSM - I find it kind of irritating, as if they really need more kids to apply.
son19 did not fill out the info on act/sat so he hardly gets any mail. He gets stuff from Colby, but never asked for it.
He gets some Case Western mailings. And Tufts sends him their magazine. That’s about it, he gets some random mailings every few weeks, but honestly not very much. . I remember my older kid getting a lot more mail, especially at this time of the year. I’m fine not gettin anything, most of it is not particularly helpful.
D19 gets college mail from all over the country. At first I would tell her to open it and just see what they have to say.
Now we’ve started to just put it in the recycling bin without even opening some of it. She is not a high stats kid, but maybe our area is interesting to colleges trying to reach out to omeone who might open their mail. A friend of mine w/ a D the same grade also received the Harvard mailer. My friend was so excited. I burst her bubble by telling her that they are just casting a wide net. I don’t know if she fully believed me, but I tried. :))
We do live in a relatively expensive area and have gotten no mailings at all. I think it’s because D19 didn’t take the PSAT and hasn’t taken the SAT yet. I will make sure she doesn’t check the box on May 5th. (I’m picturing the scene in Harry Potter when the Dursley house is inundated with Hogwarts letters! Except we’d love one of those, of course.)
D19 receives a lot of mail from University of Chicago, but I think that is classic case I’d recruit to deny. Even though she is in a very competitive HS and has a weighted GPA of probably 3.9/4.25 she only scored 1370 on PSAT with Index of 198 which does not put her in NMF range (which is why I said what I said about U of Chicago). When she took the SAT scored 1420 (640R, 780M). When I graduated HS I think an SAT score in that range would be very competitive for Iveys. Today student stats are so competitive I’m concerned where she really stands. College Board said she scored in 98th percentile but I’m not sure if that means anything?
