I was turned off by a marketing video Carleton College has on YouTube. It is really well done, but the students come across as too purposeful, too driven in a demonically happy way. It’s hard to describe.
It would be helpful, then, for you to link the video so we could see?
We thought Kenyon’s mailings were clever. D really wanted to like this school.
This is the Carleton video link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jDiBHUIEXdM
I like Yale’s “That’s Why I Chose Yale” a lot, even though it is 17 minutes long.
After a tour at Colgate, you are invited back to admissions for “an ice cream sandwich”. We were expecting the typical two thin chocolate wafers with a thin filling of vanilla ice cream. What they gave us was a full inch-thick vanilla ice cream slab sandwiched by two gi-normous chocolate chip cookies!!!
I agree with @MatzoBall that Carleton’s video was kind of intense, but I really liked the mailings I got from them. One letter in particular came with a list of multiple choice questions about college preferences in which you could check off the box that applied to you and mail it back to them for the school to see how well you would fit. Each question had three options: two that were pretty broad but total opposites, and one that applied specifically to Carleton. For example, under size of school, the options were: large, small, or 2,014 students (Carleton’s undergrad enrollment). It was quirky and bold, but also made me chuckle a little bit.
On the other hand, I really hate the marketing from Central College, my dad’s alma mater. I know that they have a special interest in me as a legacy student, but they don’t fit my preferences at all, and I’ve shown absolutely no interest in them, yet they still send me mailings 3-4 times a week.
Ohio Wesleyan did a very good job – interesting / varied emails, glossy & informative mailings with a recurring theme, etc. Their honors weekend was really top-notch, well organized and food everywhere. Very friendly & hospitable.
Wells paid $ for my daughter to visit, which I guess I’d call marketing! More to the point, they noticed from her paperwork that it was her birthday and custom-made her a card & dessert for our luncheon, and did a lot of very personal things. I’ve heard that they are very personal to everyone, which they can be as it’s a tiny school.
The best swag, by far, came from Agnes Scott. D heard she was accepted by unwrapping a tissue-paper wrapped jewelry box with a Scottie pin. There was also a Scottie key chain as acknowledgement of her application, and a few more nice things along the way, all of which gave us warm-and-fuzzies.
It’s probably worth noting that she didn’t end up chosing any of these, they weren’t even top 5.
Other D got a lot of stuff from Harvard and UChicago, all super nice, but she just she just said lol & pitched it rather than waste the app time and fee.
OMG the Carlton Video was 17 minutes looooooong. Nooooooo!
the Yale video was absurd. Did NOT like and felt like the only reason they could show that video is to discourage a few people from applying . . . because they could . . . because they are Yale. 
@frazzled2thecore We loved the Rose one with the legos too! It spoke to my son but that was about 10 years ago. I liked the Purdue personalized the welcome for the kids with a poster to hang saying XXX is a boilermaker. I seem to remember people taking pictures and posting them. I also agree about the numerous WashU mailings. It was a lot, but it was a tough choice for my kid to turn them down. Great marketing, great tour, beautiful campus.
I don’t know if it was the best or the worst, but WUSTL sent my daughter the most. She’d never indicated any interest, had never been to St. Louis, had never heard of WUStL, but they sent her postcards and booklets and letters and just about everything else. It was sad when the mail stopped. Lonely. Like we’d been dropped from the Christmas Card list.
One I thought was the ‘best’ was Wyoming. Wyo sent my daughter a calendar with all the important dates on it - FA deadlines, department scholarship deadlines, open house days, football schedule, SAT/ACT test dates, and of course 12 pictures of the campus. It immediately went up on the wall and didn’t come down until she started school.
I only know what came by mail. I know they each received a ton of stuff by email and text. A few calls.