<p>I have received those general letters (reminding me to apply to their schools) from many colleges and was esp happy to see material from Yale, MIT , Princeton, Columbia and Dartmouth.
However, I have received nothing from Harvard!!! NO e mail and no letter…has anyone else received such letters or is Harvard not sending them out this year? Or maybe I don’t qualify to receive their letters based on some aspect of my PSAT or SAT scores…</p>
<p>Don’t worry about it. It means very little. When they’re reading your application they won’t even know (or care) whether they sent you a letter/email or not.</p>
<p>juniormathwiz, 59sound is right
Harvard probably won’t care and neither will the top schools
Your actual application is by far the most important parameter to judge you
best of luck</p>
<p>I got one from Harvard. Also received a bunch from non-ivies and some from Yale, Columbia, MIT, UPenn…not Cornell or Brown yet though and those are the ones I really want!</p>
<p>Sent from my Vortex using CC App</p>
<p>If you’re waiting on a glossy brochure from H in order to steel your confidence to apply, then maybe you already have your answer on whether to apply or not…</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter at all. One year Harvard sent out 70,000 letters; obviously, the great majority of those people didn’t get in. Conversely, a lack of silly promotion does not in any way indicate you don’t stand a chance. Most of those letters, touting students’ “achievements”, are sent to people that do very well on standardized tests (PSAT, SAT, ACT). They don’t take into account anything about your grades, EC’s, etc. I’ve gotten a brochure from Harvard but not from Princeton. I’m still applying to Princeton and not Harvard.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that when you join College Board’s “SSS Student Search Service” by checking off that box when you take the PSAT and all, that colleges only get your name, address and ethnicity – your scores are not shared. so these mailing lists are huge and only provide that info. So unless these colleges also have info/scores about you from some other source, I would assume that they are not specifically targeting you for achievements/scores, but rather only by the very basic aforementioned info they received from SSS…</p>
<p>From the College Board website:</p>
<p>You say “yes” to Student Search Service during registration.</p>
<p>We send your information to colleges, universities, scholarship programs and nonprofit educational opportunity organizations that are looking for students like you.
The following information will be sent:</p>
<p>Name
Address
Gender
Birth date
High school code
Graduation year
Ethnic identification (if provided)
Intended college major (if provided)
E-mail address (if provided)</p>
<p>The following information will NOT be sent:</p>
<p>Your scores
Social Security number
Telephone number</p>
<p>The College Board makes every effort to protect a student’s privacy. When a student takes a College Board exam [such as the PSAT/NMSQT, SAT® or Advanced Placement (AP®)] they have a choice to “opt in” to Student Search Service (SSS). If the student says yes, this enables the College Board to provide that student’s basic information to eligible colleges and universities, scholarship programs and certain higher education enrichment opportunities.</p>
<p>well…a few of the letters I received says “based on your scores” or “based on your PSAT scores” implying that they got in touch based on some aspect of standardized test scores…i think they do not receive actual scores from college board but get a range of scores so that they decide if they want to mail letters out to kids who they think should receive them…that is my opinion…not all colleges said this in their letters but a lot of them did.</p>
<p>Everyone who is getting all excited about letters should read this from article The Boston Globe:</p>
<p>“Many called, few chosen by top universities” </p>
<p><a href=“http://articles.boston.com/2011-05-22/news/29571988_1_mailings-college-admission-test-admissions-and-financial-aid[/url]”>http://articles.boston.com/2011-05-22/news/29571988_1_mailings-college-admission-test-admissions-and-financial-aid</a></p>
<p>I read that article back in may,I do realize it is a marketing thing…but i was wondering why some ivies contacted me &others did not…oh well…it is not impt…only the application is if I even apply…I do think though that somehow scores are given to these colleges
In a range type form since actual scores are not allowed to be given…even then,they mean nothing since most kids are not accepted to these schools as the article stated…</p>
<p>jrmath – i thought the same thing too so i called the college board and asked. they were very clear that they did not release scores or ranges of scores or anything to do with scores. then they referred me to the SSS info on their website i copied above.</p>
<p>so if the SSS is the college’s only info about you and you feel you are being “recruited to apply” instead of a mass mailing thing, I would assume it was based on that specific college looking for more candidates of your “Gender, high school, Ethnicity or Intended college major” as that is all they know about you from the College Board if you haven’t sent them scores yourself.</p>
<p>They must be lying somehow…I took the psat in 9th grade, did…eh…and got mail but only from small colleges I had never heard of. When I took the test again in 11th and got good scores, I heard from a handful of ivies and other top-tier schools. I have friend that took it as well by didn’t score as high and didn’t hear anything. We are all girls, from Michigan, interested in the sciences. It has to have SOMETHING to do with scores. Plus, some of my letters also say “based on your outstanding psat scores”. They coukdne send that to everyone or people would be like…what? </p>
<p>Sent from my Vortex using CC App</p>
<p>My college counselor told me that these colleges literally buy the lists of highest scores and then mail those students. If it was based only on factors like ethnicity, then pretty much every student in my school (one full of hispanics) would be getting letters, which is not the case.</p>
<p>I also find it weird that I’ve gotten no mail from Harvard. I’ve gotten mail from every single school in the U.S. it feels, and quite a few desperate emails from really low tier universities offering me an ipad if I applied or sending messages like “We know you’re there” and others in the same creepy vein. I even received a large packet from yale detailing financial aid help the school offers. yet not one thing from Harvard. Maybe my PSAT was too low? It was a 203, but I’m Hispanic… whatevs…</p>
<p>Update: Just read the article, so yeah what happens is that these colleges pretty much buy the list of highest x % of scores.</p>
<p>pmcm18 - i wish you could share the college board’s own words (above) about NOT sharing scores with your counselor and ask WHERE else these colleges could possibly be buying scores? all i can think of is (shudders) do high schools sell them as they usually get score report copies?</p>
<p>and if these colleges actually have your scores from CB already, it would seem unethical to ask us to pay for the CB to send ours again if they were, indeed, received from them. Not to mention, this would imply YOU have no control over which scores a college does and doesn’t see. and score choice is a total falsehood then.</p>
<p>perhaps the separate national merit scholarship corp releases the top scorers of the PSAT when they announce their lists? or perhaps when colleges get a list of kids who take AP tests from the CB (with no scores), they assume kids taking AP tests probably tested well elsewhere? on state type exams or the like too? all guesses.</p>
<p>i;m at a loss as to whether there is a “score leak” or whether these “please apply” letters are all just marketing to lower yield rates and ergo increase ratings…</p>