Since taking PSAT for the first time a couple years ago, I have filled three garbage bags full of stalker school mail, and one smaller bag full of the letters I actually wanted and looked forward to. At one point I received 4 letters from St. John’s in as many days- state schools were even worse.
My worst experience has been digitally- most recently with Emerson College. After not replying to months of emails, I’ve been unsubscribing more than once to their mailing list since October or November, and every other day I’ll still get one or two emails asking me to apply…
I haven’t “caved in” to any of them.
Surprisingly, I got letters from UChicago, but the university has by far sent a smaller amount of letters to me in comparison to other schools, even though I “showed interest” and even applied. I have perhaps a handful of letters from them. Maybe after you show interest, they back off? 
Colleges don’t even know the caliber of the student they’re stalking (outside of the fact that they did somewhat well on some standardized test). They just send out a bunch of emails so they could give students false hope and pretend it’s individualized attention so they can lure students and then deny them and then artificially deflate their acceptance rate. The colleges that stalk me are Wheaton, Tulane, Creighton, U of Pacific. Not only do they send me reminder emails nearly every day, but they also extended their deadline, sent me fee waivers, and created a personal application for me. Though I get tons of “Check us out” emails from Harvard, Dartmouth, and Arizona State in particular, none of them are as annoying as the other ones I mentioned above.
Texas Tech kept emailing me for weeks asking me to come to some “meet” event. I wasn’t interested since they don;t offer the degree I want, so I just ignored them. Is there any correlation between higher PSAT scores and more mail? Like, is someone who got a 150 on the PSAT going to get the same level of mail as someone who got a 225? (It probably varies by geographic region as well.)
I personally felt that the score was correlated with the quality of schools.
When I had a 1950, I had decent, medium schools (nothing that would impress a neighbor at a barbeque) but when I got a 2020, the first school that mailed me something was NYU. It may not be this way at all though–just my personal experience.
The score examples you give are a little bit more drastic. However, I heard people say that they got mail from Harvard and Yale and Princeton…they never contacted me!
Chicago, Columbia, Rutgers, Indiana, Nebraska-Lincoln. ACU, Wooster, Drew, Westminster AND washington&jefferson… Gosh.
Brandeis, Chicago, Hampton-Sidney, Brown, UVA, and Forham. I get H-S and UVA we are in state but we have no idea why these other schools have sent not only weekly emails but loads of snail mail.
Oddly enough Biola (Bible Institute of Los Angeles) sent me a few emails, despite the fact that I listed my religion as Jewish. Drexel and Hofstra were the biggest spammers. It was a rare day that I didn’t receive an email from at least one of the schools. Ended up applying to Drexel since the app was free and my mom insisted. Never had any actual interest in attending.
Daughter thought it was funny that University of Pennsylvania would put the word “ivy” in the subject line of the daily emails they sent.
Tulane, Hofstra, Case Western, UChicago, Drexel for me. The smaller colleges make sense but why UChicago and Case? Surely they have enough applicants to reject.
Hillsdale. Sometimes we would get two mailings a day, and consistently 5 mailings per week. Absolutely no interest was shown.
Does anyone see that UChicago seems to be disproportionately on many’s list. Makes sense since UChicago is on a mission to have at least as low an admission rate as Stanford and Harvard since its leadership thirsts for validation of its prestige and eliteness.
That’s because they think there are enough people who think Penn = Penn State = state school not Ivy. Yet are smart enough to get into Penn. Being Harvard or Yale gets you mentioned all over the place, like anyone from any background in the US might hear or see daily. When I was growing up, and first heard there were 8 Ivy League schools, I was like WHAT? I knew Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. That was it. I really only started hearing about the other five in high school. Harvard and Yale were both mentioned in Bugs Bunny and other cartoons. Einstein was at Princeton. The rest ? Growing up in a blue collar second-generation American family.
Anyway, my son has found that in the last few days, and even today, he is getting a lot of email from schools with January 15th deadlines. It’s like they are more desperate than the January 1st schools for some reason.
He also was annoyed that after he applied to four schools, they kept sending emails that said “please apply” but that was a chance to educate him about corporate dysfunction and marketing vs. actually doing something.
We have at least a full Xerox box (as they’d say in the old days) of college materials. The one that got us was the Yale and Columbia huge catalogs they sent. So many dead trees…
We don’t understand WUStL’s constant emails either. They don’t seem like they are begging for students, but maybe they think the bad press about lack of diversity and harmony in the St. Louis area means they have to try harder this year.
Since my son was accepted ED, we both have been trying to unsubscribe from automatic emails. Many seem to use some kind of “Hobsons” emailer, so that when you unsubscribe, it just says “unsubscription successful” with NO college listed!
I find it pretty funny that Hobsons is the name of the emailer for many schools, because of what Hobson’s choice means (it’s in Wikipedia if you don’t know).
NYU, and no, the big glossy magazines didn’t sway my children.
UPitt’s and Tulane’s emails almooooooost swayed me, just because the apps were free and they said they’d give me scholarship money. I didn’t end up applying though. Just goes to show that college is really a business.
I think Chicago and WUSTL do this because they are continuing to raise their national profiles, and to do that they need applicants–and admits–from all around the country. Personally, I see nothing wrong with this.
This stalker phenomenon is not limited to colleges. My son applied to boarding schools last year. I remember checking the box for allowing interested schools to contact him…got a barrage of emails.
Most notable boarding school stalker: Christchurch School in Virginia.
Close second place: St Michael’s University School BC Canada
Hunt My point was that Chicago seemed to be on disproportional number of student’s list compared to other elite schools, which given the high stats needed to get into Chicago seems a bit odd that it would target students with lower stat profiles that the Chicago Adcoms would give very little look if applications were submitted by these low stat students. If that is the case then I see something wrong with Chicago’s behavior.
@voiceofreason66 @Hunt Exactly, voiceofreason66, it’s deceitful and quite annoying.
The inefficiency of the market at its clearest. Just think of all the wasted time and paper.
Monmouth University in New Jersey. I don’t know why, we’ve never visited or expressed any type of interest. Certainly did not apply. Mail from alums on their personal letterhead not the schools seemed creepy to me.