Because bad weather can mean Internet and/ or power outages and they wish to be sympathetic to those.
Sorry, but it’s true. There’s not a darn thing different about college marketing lists than any other business.
This is new isn’t it? Extending the deadline at the most selective universities? Deadlines used to be firm, yes? This year my fifth and final kid is going through the process. This game started in 1999/2000, before we knew about College Confidential (was it around then?) I don’t recall the most selective schools extending deadlines before. Boy did child #2 scramble at the last minute to get that Jan. 1 postmark for a couple of schools. Postmark? Sounds so quaint now. That was way back in 2004.
I’m cynical. Some of these schools extending deadlines are already in the single digits for acceptance. What happened? Are they afraid that acceptance rate will bounce back up into the teens? Oh horrors . . .
There are some thirsty schools out there like Tulane, U Chicago, Northeastern, Emory, etc that truly want more applicants.
Chicago should just permanently move its deadline to late January. That’s better than offering multiple extensions every single year and making up bogus reasons for doing so.
Acceptance rate counts for only 1.5% of the USNWR ranking, so it’s hardly as though bumping up applicants at the last minute is going to be some surefire way of gaming the rankings. That’s another myth on CC - that acceptance rate bumps rankings appreciably.
My S dumped W&M from his CA list after he was accepted to Michigan (bc he felt that he would choose it between the two and send it would just be for vanity.) I have to wonder if this is very common, so W&M (lots of school really) loses a lot of potential applicants right before the due date? He hasn’t received an email from them since he deleted them from CA. But if it is still on your CA they will still try to entice you to finish it?
Why wouldn’t ANY school with knowledge of a student with an unfinished common app want to send a reminder to finish it? Sending emails is dirt cheap.
Honestly, don’t any of you own small businesses? If you had prospects you could reach via email, why wouldn’t you? If you ran a car dealership and had the email of someone who came in for a test drive but didn’t buy, why wouldn’t you send them an email asking how their test drive went and reminding them of the good things about the car? If you ran a restaurant and could track people who have visited in the past but hadn’t been in 6 months, wouldn’t you send an email to them reminding them to come back in? This concept is just such common sense; why are people so perplexed and puzzled when colleges do it?
@Pizzagirl Agree, but those emails should have gone out before deadlines. Extending deadlines to gather more apps that you will likely REJECT (talking about competitive schools here) is disingenuous to the students who diligently spent their Christmas break finishing their apps on time.
We didn’t know that until I started reading CC last year. D17 started getting all these flyers and we were like, wow! total Sally Field moment: they like us, they really like us!
Once we actually figured out what was going on, D felt a little tricked, frankly, and all the flyers have had the opposite effect-now she doesn’t want to go to a school she thinks is trying to be shady with her and tosses all the flyers.
I’m trying to get her somewhere back in the middle where she realizes higher academics is a business, and these schools are not your buddies, but there is good value to be had in them and the flyers may give her some info on a school she hadn’t considered or heard of before.
@Pizzagirl - if you had a small business and only had enough product for, say, 1,000 customers - yet you already had 4,000 customers who were requesting that product, would you solicit more customers? This is not like a business model at all - this is a model designed to increase customers only so that more can be turned away. They aren’t “selling any more product” by these solicitations - they are doing it to increase applications, thus potentially being able to decrease their admission rate. (I guess I really meant “Admission Rate Mongering” rather than “Yield Mongering” in my thread title.)
Acceptance rate may not play a large role in rankings, but it’s an impressive number for colleges to report.
So they want to decrease their admission rate. So what? A) it’s not “gaming the rankings” and B) it doesn’t change anything about the quality of the school / offerings.
It’s like being “upset” that the pizza parlor wants everyone within a 5 mi radius to know they exist, even though they can’t serve all 20,000 families within that radius on any given night.
Ah…but lets say you’re running a sports team with 25 openings. Would you want 50 folks coming out for try outs, or 500? You would want 500, even if you know that 20 of your slots will be filled with the first 50 that applied.
At least that was the original reason for colleges to become more aggressive in marketing. Now we can’t underestimate the importance of “Selectivity” and “Yield”, as many administrators have these as key metrics.
Not like the pizza place because the pizza place can serve all of the families at some point - every family doesn’t eat there every night.
It is a little annoying to the procrastinators (ahem, our household) who bust it to hit the “submit” button at 11:45 pm on the original due date . . . to then realize that some schools give extensions. 
Oh well.
Irrelevant, GW.
Gator’s analogy is the better one.
Does the sports team want more, or fewer, people trying out for the spots? Gosh, there are only 10 spots on the team.
Does the local community theater want more, or fewer, people coming out for auditions? Gosh, there are only 15 parts in this play.
Do the shows where people sing/dance for prizes (like Anerican Idol) want more, or fewer, people coming to try out? Even though ultimately only X will get to the next round.
I’m increasingly cynical about the ploys colleges are engaged in. It hurts our kids and it hurts the field of education. Things that harm education harm our nation. Enough of it already. It is generous if colleges grant extensions to those who apply a day or so late. But when there is a pre-planned extension, the entire process is corrupted.
I did not think there was any room for me to rise on the cynical dimension. Live and learn!
Always better to have an application in since you never know if a school will give extensions. Procrastinators often need a deadline to make sure things get in anyway so it can be good that they had an earlier deadline to get things submitted. Extending deadlines doesn’t seem like anything new, even for many top schools. If an email or solicitation doesn’t apply to you, just move. on. As a Virginia taxpayer, I hope Wm & M wasn’t one of the schools offering free applications after the deadline.
So do schools know when you have them on your common app list? Seems like a duh but I hadn’t thought if that. DD does have Columbia on her list but didn’t apply. Maybe they’re targeting that.
I don’t know. I’m a deadline- kind- of-gal and if a school had a deadline of (say) Jan 1 I’d have everything in by Dec 15 anyway so I’d be free of the worry. If someone is sweating on Dec 31 and there is a last minute extension to Jan 15, it wouldn’t bother me - I’ve still “won” as I have the freedom and peace of mind the procrastinators don’t.
As for sending emails, it is so dirt cheap to administer and send mass emails, it’s not as though it’s a big use of resources. Snail mail is far more expensive since you’ve got actual physical printing and postage.
W and M was on none of our lists as my son is applying to only instate schools. @sevmom Unfortunately your tax dollars are probably paying for merit scholarships for OOS students as well. That’s always been a small thorn in my side.