MIT calls its early admits on the phone to congratulate them… why doesn’t everyone?

19 Jan

Posted by Sam Jackson as Teenagers, marketing, odd & fun

MIT has an early action telethon, where current students call every one of the early action admits and congratulate them! It’s during IAP so everyone at MIT has lots of free time, conceivably. This kind of thing is easy to set up and makes admits feel really special and loved as a new part of the MIT community.

Do other schools do this? If yours doesn’t… why not? I know MIT has fewer early admits than most (fewer than 400 students) but all the same, it shouldn’t be too hard logistically to accomplish something like that.

This is a great way to produce more warm fuzzy feelings about your school. I don’t think MIT has any problem with yields, but this can’t hurt.

edit: Kate comments to us from Yale that Yale also does this and will be calling this week. Cool!

7 Responses

kate

January 20th, 2007 at 12:00 am
1

yale does this; it should happen for EA admits this week
Sam Jackson

January 20th, 2007 at 12:06 am
2

Oh… well, really cool then! Thanks for the heads-up. Edited to reflect reality.
Jen

January 20th, 2007 at 11:04 am
3

stanford does it too. Well, they called my friends this past week.
Gadfly

January 20th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
4

Harvard doesn’t do anything especially personal for its early admits. But then again,why on earth would it bother?

You should know, Sam, that when Yale does ring you up next week, it’s got nothing to do with you. Universities bribe their early admits to try to keep their yield as high as possible, so that they look good in the next year’s college rankings. It’s not a nice feeling, but you’re a pawn in the college admissions numbers game, a game that Yale and every other school plays to win.

And as for the friendly soul who’s calling you, they’ve given their time either in exchange for beer money, or to help themselves confirm their own decision to attend Yale or MIT or whatever. If you choose Yale over another college, then they have a little extra reason to feel good about themselves. Ivy Leaguers don’t like seeing their schools sag in the rankings any more than their administrators do.

Sorry to be so dismal. For what it’s worth: Congratulations!
Lingbo

January 20th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
5

Harvard does call early admits. I personally haven’t gotten a call yet, but tons of early admits have gotten calls from students for a chat, any questions, etc.
Gadfly

January 20th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
6

What? Outrageous. We were robbed.
Sam Jackson

January 20th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
7

Gadfly– my objective is to get more schools doing nice things for students using the implicit motivation, as you described, of higher yields. A fair number of college admissions / marketing people read my blog and I figure maybe a few of them haven’t implemented these kinds of programming… but it looks like it might be universal these days, who knows! I’d just never heard of anything besides the MIT offering.

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Who is Sam Jackson?

I'm currently a sophomore at Yale University and I've been blogging about college admissions and higher education marketing trends since I began my college application process in 2005. I now also write about my experience here at Yale, and am an official Yale blogger. Click here to read my 'about' page.

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