Trees die as colleges bombard prospects

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a whole lot of snail-mail from colleges has been landing in our mailbox recently. Many schools got my son's name from a couple of college fairs and sometimes online queries to them. But the mail stepped up after the PSAT scores for this year's juniors came out.

I asked East Bay college counselor Kate Augus about the mail deluge. She confirms that it's from the PSAT, "especially if (the student) checked the box that they are interested in being contacted (which most students in fact check)."

Kate adds some cautions:

Unfortunately most families are not as savvy as you and think that "Joe College U" is actually pursuing their student personally when all the college is doing is drumming up more applications to up their rejections and their rankings. It's bad for the trees and bad for students.

For those who haven't followed this issue, in the all-powerful U.S. News & World Report college rankings, institutions get a big boost from rejecting a high percentage of applicants. So while luring a lot of applicants of course means a more wonderful student population for a college, it also means a boost in the U.S. News rankings as they reject many of them.