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Not Replying, Yet Still Applying

October 27, 2011, 12:53 pm

By Beckie Supiano

Sometimes, students don’t respond when a college reaches out to them–and then apply anyway. In a guest post today, Susan Dileno, vice president of enrollment at Baldwin-Wallace College, shares some thoughts on how the interaction between colleges and prospective students is changing. She will present on this topic at a session of the College Board Forum on Thursday.

How often have we gazed out our office windows, pounded the treadmill, or taken a long shower hoping for sudden inspiration for our yearly search campaigns?   If only we had a stand-out piece that would get students to open our letters at a higher rate.  What kind of irresistible offers do we need to get thousands of students to take action to learn more?  If only we could come up with a catchy subject line that would encourage every bright student to open our emails.  How many hours have we spent agonizing over the one photo that captures the entire essence of our campus?  Well, as a seasoned admission veteran, I have to tell you, I’m running out of ideas.  Rather than adopting a defeatist attitude, I’m taking solace in the fact that maybe none of it matters.

Students just don’t behave in ways we expect them to. So what’s a poor enrollment manager to do?  Let’s start with some basic information on how students are responding– or should I say “not” responding to search.

According to RuffaloCODY’s “Students’ and Parents’ Perceptions and Preferences in Communication with Colleges” Survey (2010):

  • Half of interested students receiving an email from an institution delete the message and explore the school online.
  • One in four does not realize that a response is required to enter an inquiry pool.
  • Only 15-percent wait to hear from schools before starting their college search.  One-third initiates their search first, and just over half indicate both happen concurrently.
  • Of all the applicants whose names could be tied back to a search purchase, 58-percent were non-responders.
  • Of non-responders who do ultimately inquire, 24-percent will officially enter your pool in the second half of junior year, and 36-percent will do so in the first half of their senior year.

We’ve seen that students’ response to search has changed.  Yet, what comes next hasn’t changed much: Those who reply enter your inquiry pool and continue receiving information from you. Those who do not reply do not, and nowadays, that is occurring more often.

Since many institutions might not be tracking their search non-responders, it opens the question, is a significant portion of a stealth-applicant pool in fact search non-responders?  In terms of who will apply, responders and non-responders behave remarkably similarly.  Knowing this, let’s look at the old ways and possible new ways of doing things.  There are four key changes to consider.

SEARCH PURCHASE STRATEGY

Old:   Increase your inquiry pool by increasing the number of names you purchase

Traditionally, the point of search is to build an inquiry pool—more at the top means more at the bottom.

New: Enhance your pool with selective purchases

You want a searched student to apply and, if accepted, enroll; does it matter if he becomes an official inquirer in between those two phases? Consider names of students similar to those who have previously applied to your institution, not necessarily whether they inquired. This may or may not mean purchasing fewer names, but it does mean purchasing names in a more analytical fashion based on past history.  Predictive modeling can help you purchase and communicate to the right students – whether or not they ever respond to your initial mailing or email.

KEEP INTEREST IN PERSPECTIVE

Old: Response = interest

Ah, the way it’s all “supposed” to work. You sent a search mailing out, and students sent back reply cards if they were interested in learning more about you.

New: Response = interest (right now)

And it’s still true; this will continue to happen with a segment of your prospect pool.   The challenge is to keep them engaged.  The earlier you search students and have them inquire, the more prepared you need to be to keep them actively engaged in a long-term, well-executed communication plan. They seek near-instant response and regular interaction: give them avenues to experience this throughout their time in your inquiry pool.

UNDERSTAND CHANGING BEHAVIORS

Old: Lack of response = lack of interest

No response to your email or reply card? Clearly the student isn’t interested in your institution. Scratch them him the list.

New: Lack of response = possible interest

A couple of things are at play here. First, ubiquitous access to all sorts of official and unofficial info about you means they don’t need to reply to learn what they want to know. Second, they may not realize that not “responding” means you will not continue to contact them. Think about it from the student perspective: If they are getting materials from you, they are obviously on your mailing list already! Why do they need to respond?

REALIGN YOUR EFFORTS

Old: The focus was to get more inquiries

Filling the top of the funnel equated to more at the bottom.

New: The focus must be on influencing applications from the right inquiries and the right non-responders.  Students WILL skip the traditional stages. Search is a way to identify students who might be your “best fits” and get your message out there, even if they don’t reply. It’s ok if they skip the intermediary process of inquiring; targeting the right segment of your non-responders and engaging them to the point of application means you can feel confident you have gotten your own narrative out to them…that they have an accurate awareness of what they are getting when they consider you.

Understanding this changed behavior in students gives me hope. I no longer get discouraged when reviewing search response rates or conversion metrics.  I know there is a large population of students on my search list waiting to hear from me again.  They prefer to stay in hiding.  They will tell me when they are ready to make themselves known.

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  • lutoslawski

    Affirmative action by economic rather than racial criteria seems fairer all around. But we shouldn’t be quibbling about this; the big scandal is undoubtedly legacy admissions, something that most schools would prefer just not to mention at all.

  • 22079340

    I seem to recall that it was Andrew Hacker (“Two Nations…”) who asked white folks what they would need to be compensated if they were “discovered” to be black. The sum was in the millions of dollars. The illusion of “minority advantage,” or “women advantage” for that matter, is rooted in the fundamental white male belief that they are always deserving, always qualified, and that competition is only valid so long as they “win…”

  • singfasola

    Moving at the last minute should be avoided, no matter what.  There are always setbacks and always surprises.  What if the house you just bought or your apartment building suffers weather damage and repairs must be made? What if 11196496 had moved later, and all those problems happened the week before the term began?
     
    If the search committee really wanted to finish its job on a high note, it would tell the new hire, as soon as the offer is accepted, or certainly before the summer:
     1)  what facilities (offices, telephones, etc.) will be available during the transition 2)  when the HR paperwork needs to be completed so that the first paycheck arrives on schedule and benefits kick in at the right time 3) when the new hire will be granted a university IT account, and whether that account can be accessed off-campus (through a VPN, for instance), since book-ordering is often done online. 4) a list of painters, plumbers, child care providers, pediatricians, and other service providers who are known to and well-regarded by faculty and staff (you cannot depend on a realtor!) and 5) HR policies with respect to time reporting, time off, etc.

    A good search committee has done its best to present the best realistic picture of the institution.  It can validate that picture, and help cement the university’s relationship with the new faculty member, by anticipating a new hire’s needs, and answering the questions the new hire didn’t know had to be asked.  This works much better than cutting a new hire loose and letting him or her fall over the administrative cliff.

  • recalcitrant

    Amen with arriving early, there are too many potential hassles to deal with on short notice and there are a number of tasks which just require a little free time to pull off successfully like finding an M.D., establishing a banking presence, signing up for utilities for your home.  Add a spouse, children, or an elderly relative to the mix and there are even more considerations.  Arrive a month or so early and headaches diminish….

  • http://twitter.com/notknott Bill Knott

    maybe if they had published some poets that people wanted to read—you know, poets in the mode of Billy Collins and Jane Hirshfield and Mary Oliver—instead of the elitist obscurantist avanthacks on their list, they might have sold enough books to cover their budget—

  • http://twitter.com/notknott Bill Knott

    and California, why no populist poets in the right out your backyard tradition of Bukowski and Ferlinghetti? you know, poets whose work is accessible and whose books sell—

  • http://twitter.com/notknott Bill Knott

    and if money is the problem, why don’t they just move to a POD model, which would cost them practically nothing?  they could still publish and promote those avanthick tomes (and offer free pdf downloads of the books)—there’s no law says they have to stick to ye old archaic deadtree traditional “trade publishing”

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Xi-Menh/100002238515879 Xi Menh

    maybe if they had printed dollar bills instead of poems we wouldn’t be having this discussion.  cut out the middleman.  we all know that writing a poem is all about the brand, all about the fat check in hand. 

    Oh, you say I’m being facetious?  That’s right.  We believe in austerity.  We can’t value anything that isn’t geared toward making money, ie valuing the status quo.  If you want accessible go to the magazine stand in an airport.  Grab some John Grisham or Danielle Steel.  If you want to be challenged by language arranged in ways that you’ve never seen before – ways “inaccessible” at first glance - then you will be upset by the closure of this press.

    Reading the Beats now is not the same as reading the Beats 60 years ago.  Then, it was populist.  Now, it’s lineage.  Pretending it’s still populist is the same thing as pretending it’s still the Summer of Love. 

    One day you wake up and find that the entire world has passed you by and that you don’t know anything at all, and you have to make a choice: do you hole up in a cave and deny anything that doesn’t seem to fit with the memory of truth you once felt, or do you acknowledge your massive ignorance and face the world as a child once again?

    Children are among the most oppressed minorities in this country.  Perhaps that’s why we can find the cash for hundreds of unmanned drones but can’t spare a penny for an avant-garde press that encourages us not to know, but to see.

  • dank48

    I’ve always liked the comment by Don Marquis, who knew what he was talking about: “Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal into the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.”

  • sand6432

    Mr. Knott, like many people, is under the illusion that digital publishing is cheap. Sorry, but only 20% to 25% of the cost of producing a book is associated with its print format. And, of course, POD is a print format, so the only real savings involved in this approach is carrying inventory and storing it in a warehouse. That helps cash flow, certainly, but overall the investment in physical inventory is a very small percentage of the cost of publishing.–Sandy Thatcher (former university press director)

  • sand6432

    I feel for the UC Press and the editors of this series, for whom this must have been a very painful decision. I once was editor-in-chief at Princeton University Press, which still has two fine poetry series, but I can attest that publishing poetry books is a very risky business with little likelihood of covering costs.  I imagine that many of the presses that continue to publish poetry only do so because of endowments that generate sufficient subsidies to make this kind of publishing possible. Presses that publish poetry and fiction also are increasingly under the gun to justify their investment in this kind of publishing, especially if they are not part of universities that have outstanding creative writing programs that they can claim to represent, such as at Iowa. The fate of the SMU Press, with its outstanding list of fiction, is a case in point. Let’s hope that the UC Press will be able to find a donor to help this series continue, as it has with endowments that support many of its other series.—Sandy Thatcher

  • http://twitter.com/notknott Bill Knott

    so saving 25 percent is not worth doing?  and what’s the other 75 percent used for (besides overpaying featherbed bureaucrats like you)— promotion? that can done online by the author and his cohort, and by a central site from which librarians et al can order deadtree copies; distribution? with POD, the printer can ship direct to customer/bookstore; review copies? reviewers can download pdfs of the book; editing? in the field of poetry, this is moot, peer panels would do it for free; copyediting? proofing? authors can do that themselves . . .

  • swagato

    Mr. Bill Knott seems to be suffering under the sad delusion that a University press is somehow beholden to society and must therefore publish only what that society “wants” to read. One wonders if he suffers from the similar delusion that to do so would be to serve the demands of a University’s reason for existence. Or, in “populist” terms, does Mr. Knott actually think valorising the status quo is the work of the academy? Lest one forget, Duchamp’s “Fountain” was not something that merely rehashed the status quo. Beat poetry was not something that simply regurgitated what was already there. There is always an avant-garde to a status quo, and it is the work of the academy to make known this avant-garde, to explore (if not necessarily judge) it, and to essentially nourish it. This necessarily entails a degree of not elitism but enlightenment. Do not confuse the two, for in doing so, you display your own stunning ignorance of the difference and of the importance of that difference. Elitism is unearned; enlightenment is earned. To be of sufficient intellectual fibre that one can engage with the unknown, the new, the weird–this is the work of intellectuals. This is why academics and the academy exists.

    Your way would destroy millennia spent in pursuit of the boundaries of human awareness. 

  • http://twitter.com/notknott Bill Knott

    Regular readers of my prose blog over the years will know how often I have urged and argued on behalf of increased funding for poetry—

    I didn’t participate in the decision made by the University of California to halt funding for its poetry publications,

    it’s not my fault UCal Press is suspending its Poets Nobody Wants To Read series—

    but hey, go ahead and blame me if you like. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Seth-Davi/1502610352 Seth Davi

    Were the taxpayers funding said University press???

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Seth-Davi/1502610352 Seth Davi

    Never heard of this series. Won’t be missed.

  • ArtPepperMeetsTheRhythmSection

    I think we have to move beyond the idea that universities will continue to support culture or the liberal arts. I believe that universities will continue to educate students in the fields of engineering, law, business, economics, etc; and those who care about the humanities will find other ways forward.

  • ArtPepperMeetsTheRhythmSection

    Of course — if you haven’t heard of it, it’s not worth finding out about.

  • jffoster

    So nothing is ever obscure because it deserves to be?

  • 72trombones

    How much money does the UC Press want to revive the series and keep it going? Does it want to make it a purely donor-supported series?

  • jamesgpete

    Recall, if you will, the plaintive refrain regarding every young person’s choosing of a major in college. The rather obvious linking between school and job drowned interest in the humanities.

    I would submit that the reverse is now true. In this time of readily available content, via computer, not schools, what rules, what governs a person’s attention? Attention is the scarce resource, not information. How is this decision made? Answer: the humanities gives you the operating structure for the process.

    Imagine the opposite of this familiar: “Oh, poetry’s great, I suppose, but what kind of work would you do?” It’s difficult, but the antidote to the lost feeling of being adrift in a sea of information. “Water, water everywhere./But where to stop and drink?”

  • winsome1

    UC Press has just made a deal with the devil–UC Berkeley’s austerity juggernaut “Operational Excellence.”  Do you suppose there’s a connection between the Press’s rejection of poetry and its collaboration with the Haas School of Business management journal? http://tinyurl.com/43nzxtc

  • swagato

    I am at a loss to understand why it is relevant whether the tax-payers, in part or in whole, provide funding to a University press. Let’s examine why I find it irrelevant.

    Case 1: The University press is, in part or wholly, funded by public tax-payers’ money. In this event, are you suggesting that it is somehow not in the interest of society in general, not in the interest of human knowledge/experience, to collectively subsidise intellectual endeavour? I can think of no reason why public subsidisation of University publishing could ever be a bad thing. Au contraire, what may happen is that representatives of the public interest would wish for a “populist” tone to the publication(s), which may even provide a healthy counter-balance to the University’s own (and necessarily more avant-garde) efforts. In fact, I would strongly suggest that public funding of the academy in all its components, can serve to subsidise and strengthen the liberal arts at large (which, lest you be unaware, includes the full scope of human inquiry. To wit, the liberal arts include the natural sciences, rhetoric, languages, etc. etc.)

    Case 2: The University press is wholly funded by private enterprise. In this case, the University is free to publish what it chooses to, populist will be damned.

    In either case, therefore, my essential point regarding the University press’s lack of indebtedness to the public will still stands. At best, a compromise is called for, but certainly no further.

  • swagato

    Rarely.

  • coochiecoo

    They could also offer them as e-books. It would really set California apart as a pioneer in university e-book publishing for poetry. I think there’d be some interest among readers. They do have some major figures on their backlist, like Harryette Mullen, Waldrop, and Berssenbruegge.

  • coochiecoo

    But the Beats weren’t being published using taxpayer dollars, by a university press from one of the most diverse and financially challenged states in the US!

    The Beats were published by small presses, and the one (Ferlinghetti) being published one of the most widely known and best funded private presses (New Directions) was publishing many of the others via his own small press affiliated with his bookstore (City Lights), which continues to publish exciting books.

  • coochiecoo

    It’s all about STEM these days.

    But you should differentiate between universities. Some very wealthy private ones, like Princeton, Stanford and Duke, will continue to support culture, the creative, performing and liberal arts and social sciences, and humanistic studies in general. They can afford to, and their their chief constituencies, wealthy parents, students and alumni, want and expect them to, and will continue to contribute money so that they can.

    Other institutions, mainly the public ones but many smaller, less well-funded private ones as well, will no longer do so. Conservatives, particularly of the libertarian kind, and neoliberals, who dominate the political “left” nowadays, have won the struggle of public ideas. Where these ideologies intersect is where we are today. Public universities must do more with less, and cannot be all things to all people, though the strongest and richest ones will be able to do more than the rest.

    This society has prioritized making money and the profit motive above all else. Capitalism is triumphant at the very moment when its near-collapse might have led to a rethinking of how we proceed. Once upon a time poets, and artists in general participated publicly and actively in this rethinking, in this society. That happens less so nowadays.  So universities, especially the ones dependant upon taxpayer funds and corporate support must get with the program, or else.

    People may cry about the end of civilization as we know it, but the reality is that if liberals and progressives will not make a public case for the humanities, and cede the arguments, rhetorical, discursive, material and otherwise, to the conservative/libertarian-neoliberal nexus, in order to score points in a professional echo-chamber, then those on the right will have the final say, and not just with universities, but with everything. Right now they do.

  • ArtPepperMeetsTheRhythmSection

    Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Maybe we’re seeing a bifurcation and return to an older model: A liberal education for the children of privilege and vocational training for the rest of us. (To be clear, I’m not against vocational training, or against science and engineering — my field was CS.) 

    I do think the humanities will survive. What may not survive is the ideal of the humanities as broadly accessible to everyone.

  • rich8695

    I’m sure if Bill Knott had been published by this press, he would now have an entirely different attitude about the quality of the series. Blah blah blah.

  • swagato

    That is informative, but note if you will that my comment was not specific to Beat publication.

  • http://twitter.com/notknott Bill Knott

    maybe . . . on the other hand, i didn’t/don’t like most of the poets published by the places that published my books, Farrar Straus & Giroux, BOA, Random House, U of Pittsburgh, U of Iowa et al, so even if UCal had published me i doubt i’d be mourning its deserved demise . . .

  • http://twitter.com/notknott Bill Knott

    a couple quotes:

    from the TLS, 07/08/11, page 9, Tim Blanning reviewing an anthology of European Romanticism notes that many Romantics sought 

    ‘an alliance that was populist . . . . for cultural value in any society was not to be found among
    the classically educated elites, with their sophisticated but artificial culture, but with the common people. . . . The Hungarian poet Sandor Petofi proclaimed: “folk poetry is indeed the true poetry.  Let us set about making it supreme!”  He was writing in 1847, the year before a wave of revolution swept across Continental Europe and gave retrospective piquancy to his further observation that “if the people rules in poetry, the day cannot be far off when it will rule in politics too.” ‘

    and:
     
    from Laurie Smith’s essay, “Subduing the reader,” in Magma magazine:

    (http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=14974)

    :— the last sentence from his penultimate paragraph:

    “We need always to be alert to writers who claim that good poetry must be difficult, accessible only to the educated few, and see this claim for what it is – fascist.”

    …

  • chguk

    If the faculty at LSU want a pay raise, I suggest they come up with a way of attracting 80,000 people to watch them perform in a stadium, $75 per ticket.

    Full cost of attendance is a small step on the road to sharing some portion of the profit the workers generate with those same workers.

  • icbomber23

    That’s a great soundbite, except, well, as has been pointed out constantly, college athletic programs *do not* generate profits, but deficits for schools.

    http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/18/ncaa

    According to the NCAA itself:

    “Only 14 programs from the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) generated more revenues than expenses.”"In a similar vein, the median institutional subsidy for athletics in
    the FBS rose from around $8 million in 2007-8 to more than $10 million
    in 2008-9. Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/18/ncaa#ixzz1bnraFi00
    Inside Higher Ed

  • 22280998

    Wow, our university CEOs are concerned over how faculty will think about increasing student scholarships by $2000. Of course, the megabucks paid to athletic directors and coaches, and NCAA officials is of no concern.Most student athletes are not at major BCS schools and are not pampered.

     

  • frankschmidt

    A modest proposal: student-athletes should be paid. The amount would be whatever the institution provides as the standard stipend for a half-time TA in, say, English, History or Chemistry. This will lead to (1) less cheating, since the student-athletes would have to deal with the IRS, never mind the NCAA, if they got extra, unreported, income. (2) Much higher stipends for TAs.

  • chguk

    Hmm, except, of course, that most D-I *football* programs are profitable. The problem for the athletic department is they have to spend a bunch of money on scholarships for non-revenue sports (which, of course, enroll higher proportions of kids who could afford to pay tuition anyway).

  • chguk

    I see what you did with part (2) there, but honestly, we could just allow colleges to pay players whatever they liked, rather than imposing an arbitrary cap on their income. 

    Quite why it’s OK to regulate the pay of college football and basketball players is beyond me. Are there any other examples of professions where collusion to limit worker compensation is acceptable?

  • mhigbee

    It is false to claim that “most D-I football programs are profitable.”  Most Div-1 football programs have millions more in expenses than revenue.  You may wish to ignore Title IX requirements, chguk, but following the law is actually a requirement for athletic directors, and Title IX is the law.  

  • jbarman

    Thanks for sharing your frustrations and ideas, Ms. Dileno. On the other side of the equation, and as the father of four college-age children, I want to pass along that many parents are equally befuddled regarding what will generate interest in specific colleges.

    I toured eight schools with my daughter this summer (too many, in retrospect). She ignored factors that I considered to be important (faculty to student ratios, graduation rates, variety of academic offerings), and she placed importance on what, to me, seemed trivial: the presence of a Taco Bell on campus, walking distance from dorms to classes, ambiance of classroom buildings.

    I have also found that young adults at this age can be maddeningly phlegmatic about making important decisions. I’m not sure that non-responders are necessarily uninterested in a specific college. Instead, they will likely determine their level of interest after dealing with issues more immediately pressing (e.g. whether or not to go on a date with X on Saturday).

  • blesstayo

    Recruitment ought to be a campus-wide responsibility, and not just that of the enrollment manager. Faculty members should play vital roles in helping to attract students by disseminating information about the unique aspects of their programs to prospects. In as much as time permits, faculty members from departments with additional capacities ought to join the admission staff on recruitment trips. Of course, recruitment is more costly than retention, and college campuses should focus more on retention initiatives too. 

  • ruthgree

    On the other hand, as the parent of a HS senior with scores and grades good enough to have Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton contact her first (and who received several hundred flyers and e-mails–even some phonecalls),  I am staggered at how a handful of schools in which she has NO interest continue to send her an unending stream of mailings and e-mails.  If she didn’t respond to the first eight or 10 mailings, do they really think another flyer is the tipping point?   They are like suitors who will not take no (answer) for an answer.  Certainly some nonresponders may be potential students, but target the likely ones or engage with the students and find out.  (She did extensive research, narrowed her search down to a half-dozen excellent private and public schools, which we have  visited; she talked to professors and students in her chosen area, and will sit in on classes at another school this week.)  College costs so much.  Perhaps Mr. Barman’s daughter doesn’t want to throw herself into full-time higher education right now; a gap year working might help her focus on what she wants.

  • facultydiva

    I think there’s a disconnect between jbarman and his daughter.  Did he ever ask his daughter what was important to her?  If the walk to class is beyond her comfort zone, that will add up to a lot of skipped classes.  If the learning environment is important to her (classroom ambience), it will affect how well she learns.  Sounds like they are totally different types of people and if he hasn’t figured this out yet, why not?

  • counselorfred

    Goodness.  Everyone seems to have read Jbarman’s post and assumed he is an out of touch parent with a child who is not ready for college.  Can we not allow these poor youngsters to just act their ages?  We are talking about teenagers here, people.  Proximity of food is important.  His child sounds very much like my two teenagers, who, by the way, are excellent, and very happy, students.  Some kids are driven and focused about everything at a young age, like apparently ruthgree’s daughter.  Others are like my senior–they take their time, and they procrastinate.  We were a little worried early on and mentioned a gap year.  She looked at us like we had just suggested a sex change operation.  Let’s be honest–college searching is on top of all the other stuff they have on their hyperactive plates and I don’t blame my daughter for thinking of it as a bit of an albatross. I felt the same way at her age, i.e. overwhelmed by the possibilities.  She was almost brought to tears by the size and density of
    the Fiske Guide.  But this is where parents come in.  Knowing our daughter, and remembering how we felt at the same age,
    we helped her focus on colleges that we thought would suit her basic
    criteria and our basic criteria for a fit.  Then we toured some of
    them. We have now toured 7 and lifestyle
    issues were as important to her, and possibly more so, than the student teacher
    ratio. And why not?  They are going to spend four crucial years living at this place and they might as well pick one that makes them feel happy and has amenities that please them.  The rest will fall into place if the list is drawn up properly.  Student teacher ratios and graduation rates?  That is the kind of thing that should be taken into account in coming up with your initial list, and then used as a differentiating factor when making a final choice.  It is not something that means much to a teenager and/or is what they are most interested in while reading the college bios or touring.  They want to know if it has their potential majors and how it feels.  Think of it as similar to your search for an apartment/house or a life partner.  It’s feel and fit.  As for communications from the schools, I think Ms. Supiano’s conclusions are just right.  These kids are growing up in the information overload age and they don’t need more and more environmentally objectionable snail mail or more emails.  They may or may not be interested in your school, but an initial contact with a follow up is really enough, with further follow ups dictated by their responses if they provide any.  If they like you, they will contact you.  This generation is amazing about doing their own research.  I agree with ruthgree that barraging them with stuff is ridiculous.  It just makes them roll their eyes and go deaf.  I’m guessing that’s not the response you’re looking for.  By the way, our tours were enjoyable but mostly ended with daughter ambivalent.  She thought several were quite nice and could see herself at them but she wasn’t jumping up and down.  On the last tour, daughter turned to us as soon as it was over and said, “I want to apply ED here!”  So many parents told me, and I didn’t really believe them, it’s practically immediate–they know it when they see it.   

  • 22026266

    Getting old … what is ED?

  • taraw

    Early decision  :)

  • 22026266

    thanks for your time.  As the days go by I can barely read these things anymore.  getting really old.  is there a place to look these things up?

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