Every college-bound American high school student gets them. They start to show up in the spring of junior year, concurrently with standardized testing scores, and once they start coming, they don't stop until the summer after graduation. Unless they are instantly discarded, they will take over whole rooms.
They're "love letters," but not from a mysterious stranger -- instead, they come from hundreds of colleges and universities. In the mad scramble to attract the largest possible number of applicants, institutions purchase lists from the College Board that yield the addresses of high school students across the nation -- those who fit a set SAT or ACT score range and GPA profile and who requested information from colleges on their testing forms.
Once a college has a list, the students are destined to receive congratulatory letters encouraging an application and shiny brochures of immaculate campuses and smiling faces. Life looks rosy to the recipients of these letters who have yet to experience the rigors of the application process at selective universities.
A letter from Yale this year read, "We congratulate you on your impressive academic record and encourage you to consider Yale," according to the Washington Post.
Johns Hopkins University gushed to prospective applicants, "Bright, high-achieving students like you have lots of college options to choose from."
These letters, though, come from institutions with acceptance rates last year of 16 percent and 32 percent respectively, according to U.S. News and World Report. Clearly, many of the students who receive such letters will not actually be admitted -- but colleges keep sending them to ensure a broad applicant base.
Because a hopeful letter from a selective college could end up in disappointment, Dartmouth does not send letters to potential applicants, Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg said.
"We send brochures to students on the College Board lists," Furstenberg said. "If the student returns the card, then we send them an application."
Furstenberg said that the College requests target students with high-end SAT scores and GPAs because he sees it as unfair to encourage unqualified applicants. However, Dartmouth still sends out approximately 30,000 brochures.
"It is something I worry about," Furstenberg said, referring to the potential of raising expectations unfoundedly. "We walk a fine line."
Unlike Dartmouth, Harvard University sends out around 65,000 of these letters each year, said Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis. The letters introduce Harvard as an option for students and ultimately help give the university a broad applicant pool.
"We want to keep as much choice and control over the admissions process as we can," Lewis said.
She also referred to the letters as a way to "show the flag," or make people aware of the university.
"We want every family in America with a high-achieving, talented student to get a letter from Harvard," Lewis said. "People not from the Northeast might think Harvard is in Europe. We want people to know that despite the exclusive reputation, we are a reasonable aspiration."
A reasonable aspiration, perhaps, but one with an admissions rate this year of a cutthroat 10.5 percent, according to Lewis, who says she is aware of the delicacy of the situation.
"This is the hardest letter I write each year," Lewis said. "We tell people that we want them to think of us, but that admission is very competitive."
The competitiveness of a university is often a factor in media-generated national rankings. U.S. News and World Report uses selectivity and admissions rate as criteria in its evaluation of American universities. Lewis said, though, that Harvard sees its low admit rate as a negative factor.
"We hate it to be known in some ways," Lewis said. The statistic, she said, could discourage strong applicants.
Former Duke University admissions officer Rachel Toor is blunt about the process of eliciting applications. In her recently published book about the admissions process, "Admissions Confidential," she admits that she encouraged qualified applicants that Duke would later overwhelmingly reject.
"Admissions officers are like carnival barkers," Toor said. "We always encourage people to apply."
After spending time traveling around the nation speaking to prospective Duke applicants, she believes that the letters schools send out to students encouraging them to consider the institution often leave recipients with the wrong impression.
"A lot of people think that they are being recruited, but that is just a big fat lie," Toor said. "These kids get set up for a big fall."
