Sebastian (a lady) Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 Another wave of college mail came yesterday. Five nearly identical looking envelopes with nearly identical looking contents. A letter that looks like a form letter. A folded smaller sheet hat could be filled out and mailed in. Neither says anything about the school. Instead they sound like high pressure sales pitches to go fill out a quiz online - at a marketing site that is separate from the college website. Both sons who are getting this stuff asked me why a good school would send them such junk and why they would want to look like other schools sending junk mail. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaithManor Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 My guess is that the schools engaging in this have had a cut in funding for marketing. It is expensive! Ds has only received cookie cutter looking mailings from schools he is not remotely interested in nor applied to, and frankly, we've wondered if the ACT board isn't selling their mailing list to every college in the region. The schools he has been interested in have sent very uniquely "theirs" kind of mailings. U of MI Ann Arbor even has a different feel than U of MI Flint campus, and Alma sends everything in their tartan plaid that they are so proud of...really, Alma does a super nice job with their mailings. Michigan Tech has it's own unique look, quite well done. But, my niece's school - she admitted to giving them ds's contact information...grrrr... - has some absolutely, "you should be embarrassed to send this out" kind of mailings, and their emails are laughable, annoying, and ridiculous. Someone at that school really needs to rethink how they come across to potential students and parents! (Yes, we've contacted them and told them he is not interested. He's emailed several times, and called more than once to get his name off their mailing list. It has continued despite these efforts.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MysteryJen Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 Dd1 received about 20 letters (from the same marketing company, I am sure) in two days. The sad thing was none of the schools had pools. The absolute waste of time and money to send those letters is staggering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaithManor Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 Dd1 received about 20 letters (from the same marketing company, I am sure) in two days. The sad thing was none of the schools had pools. The absolute waste of time and money to send those letters is staggering. I know. I mean my niece's school doesn't even offer ds's major. Despite the fact that he has also brought that up to them, they still send their junky letters and mailers every single week with weekly emails, and probably until the last possible deadline for applications, the phone calls as well. They don't take a hint. But! and this is a big one, they took well over 2500 applications in last year, accepted 72% of the applicants, and netted out of that 1800, only 314 freshman which is a very low yield. Their yield has been quite low for the past five years, and they'd like to have a freshman class double that size. So, seriously, they need to rethink their strategy. Spending precious dollars stalking high school seniors by mail and email isn't getting the job done, LOL! Well, neither is cold calling me and asking me for a donation to a school we have never attended and will never send a student to is not making positive in roads either. It's really rather desperate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tsuga Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 They hire outside consultants--the same consultants who work for all the other schools. The consultants sell them all these activities like over-mailing, which appear to work but which have not really been tried as a randomized trial. They hire consultants because paying a salary is too expensive. If you heard the consultants speak, you'd think spending money on mailing was some kind of holy grail. Also, they are like... "And all the young people, you know they're on The Twitter and The Facebook!" :willy_nilly: So here we are. I hate it. Nobody benefits but the consultants and aren't they making their money! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RootAnn Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 So if you don't check the "sell my info to every Tom, Dick & Harry" on the ACT/SAT, how much junk mail / email will you get? And, is that a good (sanity-driven) option? It won't hurt you to NOT check the box, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JanetC Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 After the PSAT mail, DD decided not to check the box going forward to the SAT. You can give your name just to schools you're interested in hearing from at school websites and college fairs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JanetC Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 If you heard the consultants speak, you'd think spending money on mailing was some kind of holy grail. Also, they are like... "And all the young people, you know they're on The Twitter and The Facebook!" :willy_nilly: So here we are. I hate it. Nobody benefits but the consultants and aren't they making their money! Some of these consultants get paid more if the student acts on the advertising and becomes a sales lead. Hence, all the "log into our marketing website and find out all the stuff we could have put in our mailing but didn't!" come-ons. So, not only do these consultants increase the quantity of junk mail, they are directly responsible for the decreasing quality of the information as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted February 5, 2015 Author Share Posted February 5, 2015 Some of these consultants get paid more if the student acts on the advertising and becomes a sales lead. Hence, all the "log into our marketing website and find out all the stuff we could have put in our mailing but didn't!" come-ons. So, not only do these consultants increase the quantity of junk mail, they are directly responsible for the decreasing quality of the information as well. Ah, this makes some sense. I've seen reports that the email "Nigeria scams" are purposely badly written in order to help sort out the type of person who wouldn't bite on the scam. The presumption being that the people who be put off by the bad grammar would be more likely to send bank info to a stranger. It made me wonder if something similar was in effect with the mailers. Are they generic because they are trying to catch the eye of the uninformed student who thinks that $150,000 of parent cosigned loans for an unemployable degree from a private school is a good idea? To be honest, I told my kids to check the box on their tests so they would get some mailers from schools we hadn't considered. But I expected something better than the junk mailers we are getting. And the emails are worse. I actually cannot tell the difference between the legit college emails and phishing spam. (And that isn't counting the email that looked like it was from College Board but probably really was phishing.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted February 5, 2015 Author Share Posted February 5, 2015 My guess is that the schools engaging in this have had a cut in funding for marketing. It is expensive! I guess I figure that if you can only afford to send out a couple things, they ought to be really good things that make students want to know more. In my literature coop classes I used to talk about the Charlotte's Web test for essays. If you could replace the name of the work in the essay with Charlotte's Web and not change the sense of the essay then it wasn't really a good essay about the work in question. I think some of these mailers would fail the college version of this test. Also, I notice that a number of the mailers are more about the student to whom they are addressed than about the school being advertised. I find that odd too. On the other hand, Kenyon sent a little poster with quotations from alumni that was very nicely done. Probably cost little more than less meaningful mailers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 I keep encouraging my kids to not send in the card that comes with the mailer and to be discerning. If a mailer peaks their interest about a school then sign up on the school's website for info. On the other hand we had a great conversation about how the signatures on the the letters are fake and a history of "fake" signing of correspondence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted February 10, 2015 Author Share Posted February 10, 2015 A new low. The University of Advancing Technology sent a full color large card, printed front and back with ds's full name AND they misspelled technologies as technilogies. Ds looked at it and laughed, saying I can see they don't have a writing program. At least he realizes that he's being marketed to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamato4 Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 DD is planning to apply to art schools so the mailings she's been receiving have been very nice, as opposed to DS' mailings. She's gotten very impressive ones that can be used as coffee table books. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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