Kludgist

The anecdote the article featured mentioned Vanderbilt sending her an application even though her SAT scores were lower than "most" of the admitted class, but it wasn't lower than everyone in the admitted class.

The SATs give college admissions a lot of information, but that information is still only part of the picture. I agree, it would be silly if they were sending out brochures to students with SAT scores lower than anyone they've ever admitted before, but it's conceivable that some of the lower scorers might have otherwise great applications and be admitted.

This article isn't about the fact that colleges are buying SAT scores. Yes, that has been done forever. The article is about colleges using mass mailing to dramatically boost applicants and decrease the number of people admitted.

They have some interesting interviews with college admissions staff and information about Vanderbilt specifically using this tactic to decrease their admit rate (which makes them look better in ratings).

This certainly isn't the only thing driving the massive increase in applications. There are far more students taking the PSATs, more students sending out far more applications (out of paranoia? Pressure?), and more foreign applicants.

To some extent, I think it's a positive feedback loop that doesn't require advertising at all to drive it. If you know the admit rate is low (because of all the applications being sent), then it's in your best interest to send out lots of applications -- throwing spaghetti at the wall. Then the admit rate gets lower...

Personally, I'm not entirely against this trend. Growing up in a rural area with parents who didn't go to college, I had no idea what was out there. I figured I'd probably go to the state university (which was a good school!), but didn't think much about it. When I started getting mail from colleges, it was a huge help and broadened my horizons. I ended up going to a field-specific college across the country, and really loved it.

Not only that, but it was exciting and inspiring that these colleges I had only heard about in movies and books were reaching out to me. I just never thought that would happen. I'm sure I'm not the only kid from middle-of-nowhere West coast who was really inspired by that.

Both are certainly important. A few years ago, received offers from two places. One had employees that were excited about the work, the culture was great, the job had a combination of data science and programming that was right up my alley and we talked in-depth about real problems.

The other office was just depressing. I mean, it was literally kind of dark and bare. They seemed evasive about what day to day work was like -- something about "dashboards." No one seemed happy to be there. It was a satellite to the main office in New York.

When I got the offers, the second job offered $25k more than the first job. I did a little bit of moral handwringing, but... you know, I was getting married the next week, we wanted to buy a house, and an extra $2k a month can make up for a LOT of shitty work environment. I took the second job, got a $5k raise each year, and haven't regretted my decision at all.

While it's dangerous to make predictions about the future of technology, I don't foresee any mobile product coming out that isn't "flat." How is anyone supposed to fit that into a pocket? Even in a purse or messenger bag it would be unwieldy.

I've found a similar thing with many forms of social media. My business site gets 500-1000 views a day with a 30-40% bounce rate. Two days ago, we got 5500 views with an 80% bounce rate -- turns out, we got featured on Reddit and were reasonably popular, but people just aren't interested in viewing your site or buying anything, they want to click, see it, be entertained, and move on.