In my opinion, some schools had great communications and changed my impression of the school after receiving acceptance. Other schools had very generic communication and gave the impression that they really didn’t care if you attended or not.
On the same note, when logging on to inform them of a choice to go elsewhere, some schools asked questions about where you decided to go and why. Other schools simply stated, “Your SIR response has been received.” At some schools it was very difficult to find how to inform them of a denial.
UCSB’s response to denial of acceptance really stood out to me. They asked which school was chosen and asked the applicant to compare UCSB to the school of choice in several areas (academics, facilities, distance from home, choice of major, etc). They asked (free response) what UCSB can do to attract high achieving students in the future and also asked the primary reason for the applicant choosing to not attend UCSB. It left me with a very positive image of the school’s administration and their vision for the future.
Did any schools catch your attention after acceptance as either having their act together or as a disappointment?
None of the schools that D is not attending responded in any way to her denials.
What does SIR stand for?
I think that type of communication has more to do with the level of market research a college chooses to do as opposed to how much the school cares if a student came or not
Statement of Intent to Register. A couple of schools posted “Thank you for your SIR response” (or something similar) making us do a double take and make sure that we were informing then of a denial rather than acceptance.
@happy1 I agree. Market research to try to figure out how they can better choose which students to accept and which students to reject is important and, in my opinion, shows that they care about their school (and their yield). It is interesting to see the marketing done by some schools to recruit after acceptance vs. schools that do very little if anything after offering admission. I’m referring trips, overnight weekends, e-mail communications, acceptance packages, trinkets, gifts, etc.
One school sent the acceptance letter (portal only, not through the mail), an offer to apply for the honors college and then nothing. On April 30 they sent out a reminder to SIR by May 1. That’s the school that I was referring to when I mentioned that it seemed as if they didn’t care. We almost forgot to notify them because they weren’t on our radar.
I understand what you are saying. But to some extent it is an institutional decision as to if a college feels it needs additional market research or if they are comfortable that what they already know is sufficient.
I also believe that once the admissions process is over that most students have nothing whatsoever to do with admissions again (unless they work as a tour guide etc). I have not found that admissions experiences are indicative of the experience a person will have at any given college. For example at the college my S chose we were not particularly impressed with admissions – but the school was a great fit for him, he had a fantastic four years there, and he never had anything else to do with admissions.