<p>I’m just not convinced that there’s anything wrong going on. As I said above, “For most applicants, there are adults around throughout the application process who understand that marketing can be dressed up in personally-signed letters. Later on, if they haven’t yet learned this lesson – which has an incredibly soft-landing – things can get pretty rough if they learn it the hard way. So I’m not convinced that colleges really need to do nearly as much about this as the guidance counselors and parents.”</p>
<p>All it takes is a parent or guidance counselor to say, “Don’t get ahead of yourself and assume that they’re signaling good news to you by sending you letters,” and everything is fine. I think it actually makes sense for students to keep abreast and informed and it’s useful for colleges to remain in contact. But if kids are real fragile about personal communications that are sent after their applications are sent, the parents need to be the ones who are vigilant and guard against unfounded, wildly hopeful assumptions, not the colleges.</p>