College mail

My daughter (junior in high school) has started receiving boatloads of college mail the last week or so.  She had been getting things from schools we had connected with at a college fair, but this stuff is from everywhere. Do these schools know her approximate scores or do they just buy names of everyone who took psat or act?

[Selkie]

As soon as my dd got her ACT score, she got bombarded by mail and email from colleges. I assume they have access to her score because some of them said things like, "With your score, we can offer you $--- in scholarships".

[Arcadia]

DS15 (10th grade) has been getting more college mail after his AP exam scores came out. So in our case, it’s more likely the colleges bought from the AP exam database. He took his SAT and ACT in 6th grade and has not taken it again.

What I read is that the colleges can’t buy the information about the exact scores but they can buy a list of students who fits certain criteria. 

So far all the college mail he got are from expensive colleges. His recent ones are from Brandeis, Brown, Columbia, Wake Forest.

[chiguirre]

If you don't want to be inundated, there is a place to opt out. 

[plansrme]

17 minutes ago, chiguirre said:

If you don't want to be inundated, there is a place to opt out. 

And opting out works very well.  My high-stats oldest (NM winner, multiple high PSAT scores, etc.) always opted out and got almost no college mail.  I believe the only mail she got was from her high school's selling her info.  (She did get a brochure or two from the U of  Alabama, which I helpfully burned for her.)

[Hoggirl]

@plansrme - kinda harsh. Alabama offers nice merit money for high stats students.  I know of at least one boardie’s kid who had a great experience there who had a wonderful outcome. 

It was a safety and early acceptance for my ds.  He didn’t choose to attend, but it has a lot of redeeming features. 

[GoodGrief]

4 hours ago, Hoggirl said:

@plansrme - kinda harsh. Alabama offers nice merit money for high stats students.  I know of at least one boardie’s kid who had a great experience there who had a wonderful outcome. 

It was a safety and early acceptance for my ds.  He didn’t choose to attend, but it has a lot of redeeming features. 

I think she was joking. If I remember right, she is from a city in which people tend to have strong feelings about U of Alabama because of a football rivalry 🙂 I grew up there, so I immediately understood her meaning.

[Lanny]

What I suggested to my DD, before she signed up for an account with the CollegeBoard, etc., was that she get another email account and that email account would be dedicated to the  emails that she would receive. That she would "opt in" to everything and that the vast majority of the emails she received would be of no interest and would be deleted, but that she should look at all of them, before deleting.

In her case, I believe the CollegeBoard sold the list of LatinX students they thought would qualify as National Hispanic Scholars, after the PSAT/NMSQT was taken. I suspect that is why UNC contacted her originally. 

I am glad that my DD did it that way.  We are overseas and there is a problem with mail from the USA, so she only received a few things in Snail Mail, but I suspect there are approximately 100 envelopes for her, somewhere, that were not delivered to our house. If we lived in the USA, she would have received those.

Also, I suspect the PSAT/NMSQT result is the reason she was invited by UPenn to the school fair we attended in Bogota, in May 2018.

 

[Hoggirl]

5 hours ago, GoodGrief1 said:

I think she was joking. If I remember right, she is from a city in which people tend to have strong feelings about U of Alabama because of a football rivalry 🙂 I grew up there, so I immediately understood her meaning.

 

Thanks for clarifying! 

[plansrme]

10 hours ago, Hoggirl said:

@plansrme - kinda harsh. Alabama offers nice merit money for high stats students.  I know of at least one boardie’s kid who had a great experience there who had a wonderful outcome. 

It was a safety and early acceptance for my ds.  He didn’t choose to attend, but it has a lot of redeeming features. 

I grew up in Alabama, a lifelong Auburn fan, and am a proud Auburn alum.  My children all knew from early on that I would support any school they chose, including any other school in the SEC.  But not that one.  So, yes, I did burn the Alabama brochure over the kitchen sink, on video.  I have no idea what redeeming features you might be referring to.

[Guest]

For DD it started when she took the ACT in 9th. She didn't opt out, and her two biggest areas of interest are the two biggest college majors (bio and psych, because animal behavior isn't usually an undergrad major). And she had no preference on school size, geographic region, private/public, all women vs co/Ed, or religious vs secular. So, she basically told every school that she was fair game.  She's opted out since, but the damage was done. She ended up abandoning an e-mail because it was just plain too full to keep up with. She's also done a few college fairs that got her on mailing lists, and I think she has gotten some from her herp stuff as well (for example, she got an e-mail from a school in Australia letting her know they had graduate research funds available within a week of the World Congress). So far, we are up to every state but Wyoming.  (We're putting pins in a map for each school), and are saving all the snail mail in a big box-I'm interested in seeing if it outweighs DD by the time she actually accepts a school next year :). 

 

DD is tempted to apply to every school that has bragged no application fees and that they can give her money, just to see how many acceptances she can get-I think she likes the idea of trying to be accepted to a school in every state, too :). I suspect that actually doing the applications for the schools she is interested in will make her decide against that path. 

 

Edited January 29, 2020 by dmmetler

[RootAnn]

DD#1 opted in & got a large box of snail mail that she burned as part of a bonfire with a friend (except for one or two interesting pieces & the acceptance stuff from colleges she actually applied to) before heading off to college.

All my future kids will opt out during testing because it was entirely unhelpful. 

Humorously, despite doing an official tour, my alma mater did not send my kid more than two pieces of mail (both were as a result of her tour request) and no email recruitment. I heard from other parents that it was one of the biggest snail mail senders to their kids. They must have thought my kid was a shoe-in. She wasn't.

Also, she signed up for emails & sent an email asking questions about a program through another University's website and never heard back from either. They dropped off her list. [Note that excess attention also turned her off. Hard to please middle-of-the-roader.]

The separate email would have been a wonderful idea, alas I didn’t think of it at the time.  It was created back when she was younger and I didn’t feel comfortable with her having her own email.  Her ACT account was later and goes to her email.  Once again, I didn’t think to tell her to create two.  Email in general is something I need to get under control, but is beyond this discussion.  The bulk recently has been physical mail and I haven’t asked her if the email is filling up as well.  She did like the sound of the Columbia summer program...she liked NYC when she visited a few years ago...but my guess is she didn’t check the price.

[GoodGrief]

15 hours ago, plansrme said:

I grew up in Alabama, a lifelong Auburn fan, and am a proud Auburn alum.  My children all knew from early on that I would support any school they chose, including any other school in the SEC.  But not that one.  So, yes, I did burn the Alabama brochure over the kitchen sink, on video.  I have no idea what redeeming features you might be referring to.

 

Now, see, I thought you were from Atlanta. But the feelings are exponentially stronger if you are an Auburn fan ;-)

[Guest]

A piece of college mail actually got a cheer today-with the University of Wyoming weighing in, DD's map of the USA is now complete, with at least one piece of college mail from a school in every state. :). 

34 minutes ago, dmmetler said:

A piece of college mail actually got a cheer today-with the University of Wyoming weighing in, DD's map of the USA is now complete, with at least one piece of college mail from a school in every state. :). 

I guess I have been recycling too soon.  We haven’t been tracking who has sent mail, but it does sound like a cool idea.

[fourisenough]

I open the mail (or not!) standing directly over the recycling bin! College mail drives me bonkers. Forgot to suggest DD opt out during PSAT last fall, to my daily frustration. 

[Guest]

Here's the map as of yesterday. Each pin is a school that has sent DD snail mail. We started tracking it just because she suddenly started getting such a range, and, well, I'm a homeschooler. Everything is a learning experience :). 

[RootAnn]

@dmmetler Just curious--are the pin placements approximate or just willynilly? Or does it depend on the state?

EtA:  DD did something similar by marking on our big map with a dry erase marker. But she didn't have nearly that many states.

Edited January 31, 2020 by RootAnn

[Guest]

Approximate for some, less so for others. By the 10th or so in a single day, the novelty definitely wears off-and there are some areas where the pins would have to be on top of each other, like Nashville, Chicago, and Philadelphia. 

 

 

Edited January 31, 2020 by dmmetler

[DawnM]

My 10th grader is getting a bunch too.  He says he only has one school he wants to go to and that is all he is focusing on.  But he is 10th grade, so things could certainly change, I am hoping he looks at several colleges.

[DawnM]

22 hours ago, dmmetler said:

Approximate for some, less so for others. By the 10th or so in a single day, the novelty definitely wears off-and there are some areas where the pins would have to be on top of each other, like Nashville, Chicago, and Philadelphia. 

 

 

 

I had the same question.  Where are those California colleges?  They seem to be kind of in the middle of nowhere, other than the Bay Area one.