Ivy League Solicits Students Only to Reject Them

(Bloomberg) Nicole Ederer was delighted when Columbia University and Duke University wooed her with e-mails and letters after she scored 214 out of 240 on her preliminary SAT college entrance exam junior year.

The 18-year-old high school senior in Thornwood, New York, said she spent about $780 on 12 applications after mailings from top schools like Duke, which sent a wall poster. She was rejected by Duke, Columbia and Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and plans to attend the University of Maryland.

“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, someone is interested in me,’” Ederer said in an interview. “They attract you with an e-mail and a few pamphlets and big envelopes filled with a ton of information and make you want to go to that school, and they don’t accept you.”

The deluge of correspondence from even the most hard-to- get-into colleges is raising false expectations among thousands of students, swelling school coffers with application fees as high as $90 apiece and making colleges seem more selective by soliciting and then rejecting applicants. College applications are soaring even as the number of high school graduates fell 2.2 percent this year from a peak in the 2007-2008 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Education. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-13/ivy-league-solicits-students-to-boost-selectivity.html

My son has gotten about a hundred packets from schools across the country. He has great scores, but it sounds like they have more of a cottage admissions industry going.

Canceling any federal funding and making them ineligible for government contracts should do the trick.

I susspect 10 applications for ever placement would be on the low side for any large top notch institution.

So Yale, with a fee of $50 and which rejected 23800 applicants last year raked in just shy of $1.2 million just saying "no". In addition, they had an aditional $4.5 million plus (let's assume a few fee waviers) from refundable tuition deposits with which to play on the short term money market for a couple of months at least.

And when push comes to shove, Yale is in its exclusivity a relatively small institution. It might not be as exlusively desirable, but just consider what the University of California must rake in (or just rake investment dollars off the top of) across its numerous campuses.


A mass email to every remotely qualified high school graduate costs not much more than zero. Just like with ads for Viagra, Nigerian money laundering, and unsolicited lottery wins it only takes a miniscule "hit rate" to be successful. And even though it might come as a "bolt out of the blue" an invitation to apply to a prestigious institution is more likely to be viewed positively than negatively. And it doesn't even cost a postage stamp any more to request an application.

Including bling/"free gifts" such as posters and fridge magnets in a package is an age old tactic of puting the recipient under a self-perceived obligation to do something in response.

the magazine rankings (such as US News & World Report) use a measure of admissions selectivity, so the more applicants you get, the more selective you can be, and the better you look on this measure?

Little Nicole wasn't too bright after all if this is a shock to her.

PSATs are administered in junior year of high school so she was solicited by the schools when she was 16; that is awfully young. The law does not recognize her as an adult; she can't even form a binding contract. She was no match for the marketing teams of the colleges.

If she still was that naive, I feel for her.

Actually, I feel for you. You really have no empathy for a 16 year old kid in this world.

Yale, Harvard, etc. So did my some of my friends.

We knew the game even way back then. She sounds like she is book smart but terrible naive for a 16 year growing up in a marketing world.

he had an outrageouly high score on the reading part of SAT 7th and sophmore year. i figured that is why he was receiving so much. good to have an heads up on this.

:shrug: