My daughter had a high PSAT score, but really hasn’t reeived too many solicitations. However, she scored in the 99th percentile on her SAT, so I expect a lot more stuff in the mail. The worst culprits so far are Clemson and Macalester.
Montana State and Hofstra University. Incredibly incessant
Colgate.
Tulane and Olin College of Engineering were by far the worst for me.
I’ve literally gotten emails titled “Could You Be Any Smarter?” and “I’m So Interested In You”
They finally stopped after application deadlines, thankfully. I’m sorry to hear that others did not enjoy the same luck.
RPI was the clingy girlfriend. We howled when the deadlines would move. “It’s not too late!” (And word up RPI - get your language programs back. Their elimination was a deal breaker.)
Suddenly, in April of my sons’ senior years, we are getting all this stuff from Bethel University, as if they applied and the school is just waiting for us to confirm. “Given your interest in our university”. Um, no, we have never even been to your website…
University of Advancing Technology in Arizona. I wouldn’t really call it a stalker school though since I did reply to one letter asking for more information but I’ve done that with a couple of schools and none of them have sent me as many emails and letters as UAT has. It seems like every few days there’s another letter from them in the mailbox.
Haha I actually somehow got put into elizabethtown’s system as an admitted student and they started inviting me to admitted student days and whatnot when I was still a junior in high school.
WUSTL is a definite stalker that draws no interest from DD or our family. Insistent, but not quite stalkerish schools NC State and Wake Forest are getting a look as schools DD simply hadn’t considered before but might fit some of her criteria, though one or two pieces of mail might have been enough to accomplish the same thing. DD often jokes about wanting a school to make her feel ‘special’, and although a bit tongue in cheek, one really well put together recruitment package that stands out from the rest and seems more personalized is way more effective than the schools that inundate you with daily trash can filler.
For me it was-
St. Martin’s University, Southern Utah, Fort Lewis, Holy Names, Azusa Pacific, Point Loma, Mills, Oregon State, Harvard (where I had absolutely no chance of getting in), Portland State, University of Maine, Oral Roberts, Texas Christian, Southwestern, Northern Arizona (that’s where I ended up going), Eckerd, Davidson, UCLA, Biola, and a bunch of random obscure bible colleges in the middle of nowhere.
Oh and the UC and Cal States kept sending me so much stuff as well! And I still to this day get Grad School brochures for University of San Francisco! I’m 26 and not interested in grad school at this point!
Biola, gosh I think I was getting stuff from them at least once a week! I am not very religious, so I had no desire to go there! Another one was Cal Arts…I am really not very artsy!
Azusa Pacific and University of Miami (Florida) sent stuff to me almost weekly for a couple of months and then it just stopped. I got one postcard from NYU, that was the only thing they sent me. It just seemed so small compared to the deluge I was getting from other schools…Also, Evergreen in Washington used to send stuff a lot, I think that was the school that sent me pens with their name on it…
What about for-profit schools? or ones like FIDM? I got some mailings from them too…Not a lot, but a few.
University of MN Twin Cities! Please stop! DS is not interested.
Is it simply a coincidence that those were pickup lines that used to work well in bars frequented by engineering students back in the’80s?
I think not.
And, you have to wonder about the mini-flood of solicitations that come out after Decision Day.
For kid #1, Baylor college. An application was started but never submitted and they keep calling because she’s a NMSF, which means she would get free tuition. When she told her counselor about this school, her counselor called her in and said she went there for undergraduate, told kid #1 that there was a life bear on campus. That sealed it. The application was removed.
For kid #2, she had Penn on her list on Common App but toward the end, after being admitted to several EA schools, she got essay fatigue and didn’t want to write any more essays. But the school kept sending emails to remind her to apply. Maybe that would be a good lead to the “Why Penn” essay.
I haven’t experienced the ‘extended deadline’ scenario yet; I will be a senior next year. That said, my ‘stalker school’ has changed from the years.
First it was Carleton (the frisbee was a nice touch, though it didn’t survive the summer and two younger brothers) and William & Mary (which is still emailing me); some of my earliest emails are from Colorado School of Mines, which I actually I am considering, though I’ve only gotten one snail mail paper from them, asking me to come visit (which I’d signed up for the day before, ironically).
UChicago hasn’t gotten annoying yet (I honestly enjoy their emails, and our aquatics director is a former UChicago coach), and WUSTL has been emailing me (even through the swimming coach… sly dogs!) recently. My most persistent stalker school, however, is Harvard. I’ve been getting emails from Harvard weekly and even bi-weekly…
Surprisingly, I haven’t been getting much from my in-state Us. A couple emails from one, mostly snail mail from the other… No doubt my parents will force me to apply to at least one, but still.
Biggest stalkers in terms of actual mail have been Chicago, Johns Hopkins, and WUSTL. WUSTL actually convinced me to attend an info session which I really enjoyed, and it’s the only of the 3 I’ll be applying to.
Stalker schools - what a perfect term! I’ve been getting a lot of emails from NYU and Cornell, but my experience isn’t as intense as some posts I’ve read. Class of 2017 though so it’s a bit early to apply 