- wrong thread :D
We have passed an important milestone: This weekend, as we went through the weekâs collected post, we discovered that for the first time ever, D19 (whoâs already gotten on a few college mailing lists due to taking the PSAT, attending a college fair, and such) received more individual pieces of college junk mail over the week than her D17 sister.
LOL! S19 got one last week on a day S17 didnât recieve any. He still hasnât opened it yet.
Poor trees
I have two D19 and theyâve been comparing mailings. One got a letter from a school that the other didnât and theyâre both trying to figure out why.
Both are participating in a dual enrollment engineering program run by our stateâs governorâs school, and they both want to quit (itâs boring, thereâs only one other girl, they want to be with friends). Iâm not ok with that, and have been reading here trying to get my ducks in a row for the battle thatâs sure to come when they do next yearâs schedules.
Any thoughts on foreign language in high school? Theyâre currently in Spanish 4 and neither want to take AP Spanish next year. This is another one Iâm not happy about, but Iâll let it slide if I can keep them in the engineering program. If they go to college in state/public, all their middle school credits will count, but I know thatâs not necessarily the case at private and OOS schools.
@mommdc I did the AP/EA at Carnegie Mellon many years ago, it was a great program, lots of work, but lots of fun.
Oh my.
S17âs mail today. 3 college pieces, thankfully all from schools heâs applied to and been accepted at. So not junk mail.
S19? Seven pieces.UGH. We told him not to check the box! It is interesting to see who targeted each kid early on thoughâŠdefinitely a different mix of schools this round.
No college mail here yet. There is a college fair in March , so maybe then.
FWIW, both D17 and D19 are loving the college junk mail. For D17 it was at least in part the ego rushâthe moment she got her pitch from the last of the Ivies, she figured she had bragging rights in some (as she recognized) meaningless way, except insofar as it boosted her quite weak self-confidence; for D19 itâs because sheâs a design snob, and likes figuring out whatâs behind things like font choices. For both of them, checking the PSAT/SAT/ACT box for mailings has been a definite plus.
S19 doesnât take PSAT until March so maybe we will see some mail after that. I think it will be a good thingâŠmaybe it will get him more excited about looking!
@homerdog PSAT is only given in October. Do you mean the SAT? My D19 just got her first piece of college junk snail mail yesterday, although when I showed it to her she said she has been getting emails already,
@Corinthian The sophs at our school are taking the PSAT10 as practice for the real deal. Maybe colleges donât see the PSAT10 scores and it wonât result in mailings. Our high school used to have sophomores take the real PSAT sophomore year but that changed this year.
We set up D19âs college email account, for all things college recruiting-related, two days after Christmas. There are 83 emails in it right now, all because of me going to websites and requesting more information and signing up at a couple of advisory-type sites (Cappex, Playbill.edu). I think sheâs actually looked at a couple. Sigh.
Do kids enter their email address on a form when they take the PSAT junior year? Sorry, S19 is our oldest. Is that how the schools mainly get kids addresses/email addresses?
S19 planning on taking SAT in August (so before the Oct PSAT). Do mailings start after the first standardized test?
@homerdog, kids can enter their names and then check a box that lets colleges know that itâs OK to send them emails/direct mail.
I donât think Son19 checked the box, He kind of knows where he wants to go and what to study already so made his own list of about a dozen schools of interest.
The mailings for my D15 became a nuisance after a while, but Iâm still glad my D19 is getting them. She has confidence issues and right now getting the mailings is reassuring her that she is college material and will have options. I did not know about the PSAT10, Our school district just started paying for all sophomores to take the regular PSAT a couple of years ago. D15 took it as a sophomore four years ago, but at that time only parents who were âin the knowâ at our HS signed up their sophomore kids.
@Corinthian Our high school (in IL) just switched from offering the ACT to all juniors to the SAT this last year. All schools in IL now give the SAT as the one free in-school test. This has shaken everything up. The district has also now decided that the PSAT 8/9 is what the eighth graders will take for freshman placement (in addition to their middle school classes and grades) and the sophomores take the PSAT10 to show growth from PSAT 8/9 to PSAT10 to the regular PSAT.
Some families donât understand and now think that IL colleges require the SAT and wonât take the ACT. This is, of course, untrue. The College Board just swung some deal with the state of IL to make the SAT the in-school test now. Kids can still take the ACT on their own time. Itâs all about the big business of college testing!
D19 is loving the email and postal mail deluge. Yesterday she received mailings from seven colleges. 
And yes, she checked the box to receive mailings when she took the PSAT 10 in October.
S19 chose his school email address for the college mail. Which means I donât see it. I was copied on all of S17âs (Which was critical as he misses important ones!) but the agreement with S19 is that once he gets serious about a college he will use the real email and Iâll be copied. Until then, I am fine with it being the school email. We could likely set it up for me to be copied, but donât really want to bother right now.
Sometimes, being a parent to the first born who is ready to go to college feels like being a parent for the first time. I know all the theory but when the reality strikes, everything seems very different than the theory 
It feels like we went to college when dinosaurs were around.
D19 is our first born with top PSAT scores. She thinks that I am taking things very slowly as compared to all the other friendsâ parents. She has given her own email address whereever possible. She forwards us most of the emails. Most colleges are LACs, OOS. They are out of our budget. The whole world looks different to a 15 year old and a 40 year old. LOL
D19 received mail from Swathmore today. If any of your 19âers receive a Swathmore envelope, it is worth the time to get a chuckle from a well-written letter.
Swarthmore sent some very entertaining emails and snail mail.