The mail is more targeted than you may think. Not to say that getting batches of mail equals admittance, but schools will send mail based on different formulas to target people. So certain schools will match PSAT scores with predictions for SAT scores and will send to students within a specific range. My D got at lot of mail after becoming a National Hispanic Scholar. I’m sure that getting that award was a legitimate boost for admissions in the schools who mailed to us.
@homerdog The parents should know that the mailings are all about marketing, but unfortunately not everyone is tuned into how the system works, especially the newbies. We can cut them some slack and hope they learn from their GC’s, friends, and helpful sites like CC. But then there are the parents who get caught up in it bc of course they’ve always known just how special their snowflake is and now here’s Harvard sending them letters asking snowflake to apply! This must mean that Harvard wants their kid! I knew a mom who went around bragging that her (high stats) child was a shoo-in for Harvard because they kept sending them mail. The kid only applied to Ivys and tippy top schools and didn’t get into ANY of them (maybe the “Im so full of myself” attitude came through in the essays?) and ended up at a directional school that still had some spots open in June. The marketing worked on this family–flattered them and told them what they wanted to hear. No surprise that they bought into it…
And for irritating email/snail mail, the kid is still getting information from Baylor even though he’s a second semester college freshman.
I wonder if they will remember him should he decide to apply to Baylor Medical School.
Folks - please, just UNSUBSCRIBE to every email and go on the SAT site and UNSUBSCRIBE.
The mailings are not special. They are based on the answers to the questions on the PSAT, SAT and ACT registration (like major interests), location, and PSAT/SAT/ACT scores.
They are not special. Please just UNSUBSCRIBE.
Can you get back to bashing college tour guides and lousy dorm rooms?
New topic: are therapy pets in dorms the new “we have a quidditch team” or “it looks just like Hogwarts” rallying cry at every darn college now. Go!
(And no shade meant toward anyone that requires a therapy pet…but my S19 does not get to take Pasha - Queen Palestrina Silkpurrs is her formal name - to college by calling her his therapy kitty!)
One of my DD15’s classmates has an emotional support hamster and another an emotional support guinea pig.
Federal law requires the schools to take the therapy pets with the right documentation because it is housing that falls under the law.
I told my kids not to check off the box on the PSAT and SAT indicating the College Board could share their personal information with schools. It dramatically cut the mailings they received. They only ended up with snail mail from schools to whom they had personally provided their information. Kids have to opt in in order to get on these list but the way CB phrases it make it sound like it’s all about scholarships so most kids fill in the bubble without thinking about it.
Fortunately the kid doesn’t know anyone at WashU with an unusual therapy animal. Although a few years ago the school brought in a petting zoo the week before finals to allow the students to decompress. And someone had the brilliant idea of bringing in a bear cub. And several students were scratched/bitten and there was a potential rabies scare.
I’ll get the kid a boa constrictor as a therapy pet so it can eat the therapy hamster/guinea pig if someone decides to do this in his dorm.
One of D’s first potential roommates had a therapy snake, WTH? Personally I’d be okay with it, but she was not and lost that roommate in the shuffle. From what I understand, the therapy snake didn’t make the cut.
If my roommate had a therapy snake I would bring a therapy mongoose.
Rikki Tikki Tavi could take on a cobra, but a boa constrictor? Don’t think so.
When your roommate has a full sized boa, it is time to rethink your college choice.
So true.
Definitely Penn. I wanted a little more community and intellectual feel, as opposed to a hustle/bustle professional feel. That’s why I chose Brown!
If a student has an allergy or sensitivity to a roommate’s therapy pet, how would accommodations be made? Is there a hierarchy of therapy pets somewhere? “Well, my boa constrictor trumps your mongoose.”
^ It’s the Special Snowflake version of when the immovable object meets the irresistable force…
“One of D’s first potential roommates had a therapy snake, WTH?”
I like reptiles OK, but I would no-go this roommate match on the theory that this student is likelier than the average teen to think that they’re above the rules.
Well, my D had a reptile as an emotional support animal, a type of lizard known for being very social and one that she had experience with. It was a very low maintenance choice that would not cause problems for others, but it gave her something other than herself to think about and care for and kept her company in her single room.
The snowflake comment kind of hit me, because my D is anything but. At the beginning of her third semester of college while she was on her way to class, she got a phone call from her doctor’s office telling her she had a growth in her brain. What did she do? She continued on her way to class, did not come home, and kept up with all her work in the weeks and months that followed.
A couple months after that shock, she started being treated for another suspected issue, one that killed my uncle serveral years previously. She kept doing what she was doing without any special privileges.
Meanwhile, we were limited in how we could help while she was away, and we were dealing with other very serious issues with two other kids and quickly deteriorating grandparents. It was a perfect storm in our family.
D was going to counseling and was seeing a psychiatrist for a history of anxiety and depression which are believed to be caused by her medical conditions. She did all of this independently.
She made an application to her college for permission to have an emotional support animal after her college decided to allow them. It was an involved process which required documentation from all her specialists, and at the end of it, she was turned down.
The next academic year, disability services contacted her and asked her to reapply because they were afraid they had set the bar too high. They had started to see that students who had ESA’s were doing better. A suicide also rocked the small campus in the meanwhile, and they may have been re-thinking their approach to mental health. But even then, D had to prove she was getting all appropriate medical and mental health treatment and was still having residual symptoms.
It is very obvious that many people out there are abusing the privileges of being allowed to have an ESA. It sucks and I live with that nearly everyday myself because I raise puppies for a well-established organization that breeds and trains guide dogs for the visually impaired. My responsibility is training the puppies in basic obedience and socializing them so they can be successfully trained. I am supposed to take my puppies out to appropriate places so they can become familiar with the various types of situations and environments they will find themselves in when they are working dogs.
Because the public has become accustomed to seeing people with ESA’s that appear to be little more than pets, it has become more common that I am looked at suspiciously when I take a puppy into a public place, like it’s a pet and I’m part of some con, when if fact visually impaired people are waiting for these puppies to grow up into confident, experienced dogs that will be able to guide them to their classes, jobs. shops, social events, all the places we can go without thinking about it.
So that is my rambling rant.
Not every kid with an ESA–even an unusual one–is a snowflake.
(And not every dog you see in public places is a snowflake either.)
“kept her company in her single room”
Right. The snake person wanted to have the ESA in a double.