D's college choices this spring were University of Michigan, Oberlin, and Cornell. He visited and liked all three schools. Cornell was a favorite for all of us but was just not affordable. The University of Michigan gave him a good scholarship so he will be staying close to home for college. He will live in the dorm but will only be a half hour away.
I always thought he was pretty brilliant. But, you know, I'm his mother. I guess some colleges thought he was smart too. Over the course of a year he got forty two pounds of college recruiting mail. Yea, he saved it. We weighed it. We're weird like that. We are a family
of data collectors. We weigh our garden harvest. We just can't help
ourselves. Some of the brochures had really interesting pictures and
nice papers. I saved a big box of them for crafty projects.
With all the information that is available on the internet now I am not sure that sending out so much stuff in the mail is a good method of student recruitment. Many of the letters and brochures were never opened. D could tell that many colleges outsourced the recruiting materials to the same marketing firms as many of the mailings followed the same format. After the applications were submitted we used much of the mailings for starting fires in the stove this winter. We opted not to order the terribly overpriced graduation announcements or invitations from the company suggested by the high school. (nor any of the other graduation souvenirs in the catalog.) So, I think you can see where I'm going with this... I made D's graduation announcements out of the college recruiting brochures. I "fussy cut" to get splashes of color, texture, and bits of interesting things. No one will know that they are from college brochures unless they are blog readers, but they make me happy.
I am glad that I didn't have very many to make.
