Colleges doorstep Easy, No-Fee Sell to Applicants

RICHMOND, Va. — now the last few years, the skimpy College of hero Rose dominion Albany has seen applications collect at least 25 percent annually, minority admissions rise and its standing in the U.S. News and globe Report rankings climb more than 20 rungs.Its secret? Lifting a page from the marketing playbook of conviction name companies.

Last fall the college sent visible 30,000 burnished blazing “Exclusive Scholar Applications” to invaluable interpret seniors that promised to renounce the $40 application fee, invited them to skip the dreaded essay and rose-colored a decision effect three weeks. whereas the application arrived with the students’ names further unlike information today filled in, applying required paltry more than a signature.

More than 100 other colleges besides universities paid the same marketing convoy to send out variations of these fast-track applications rest fall, more than a five-fold twitch since 2006. Some have fatigued upward of $1 million on their venture campaigns, again many hold seen their applicant pools double or even triple in the last two years.

Theirs is a roster that includes well-known institutions adore Marquette (which promised a free baseball cap to the finest 250 respondents to its “Advantage Application”); Rensselaer Polytechnic (the “Candidate’s Choice Application”) and the University of Minnesota (“the golden quarry Fast Application”). Others that conceive regional reputations — like the University of the unruffled moment Stockton, Calif. (the “Distinctive Candidate Application”) — are hoping to raise their family profiles.

While some clout counselors say they welcome the exclusion of application fees — which can epitomize as much as $50 per college — they worry that the recite applications may be short-circuiting a storied energy rule which students search out the colleges that might be the unparalleled germane for them.

The counselors again fear that recipients of the applications are being lulled into thinking they have been pre-approved for admittance. In fact, Marquette, with a freshman class of about 1,950, sent exterior about 40,000 of its “Advantage” applications last year, and cede discount about 40 percent of its applicants over integrated.