Sunday, January 29, 2012

College ( Junk) Mail Overload? No Problem

At our house we've been receiving a plethora of college mail for let's say the past six years with a one year break...However, just a heads up because it’s a little known fact that there is a severe punishment for your kids doing well on college assessment tests – it’s called mail overload. 

Sure, it begins as innocent fun in your kid’s sophomore year when you receive those first few letters in the mail. Your teen may even actually open them and read them, feeling pretty good that Mountaintop College is really interested in “motivated, high-achieving students like you.” 

Then, it becomes a little more irritating when you open your mailbox and see an even larger stack including three (differently disguised) letters from Mountaintop. These letters all seem to say the same thing -- except YOUR SON’s NAME is cleverly placed on each one. If you don’t open these IMPORTANT and DATED letters every day, your kitchen counter could start looking like the top of your kid’s dresser. So, what to do with this plethora of paper? 

Here are five ideas (after you’ve sorted out the ones you may actually want to read):
1.     Give it right back to them. Nothing like “return to sender” to stop them coming…can you imagine the college mailrooms if everyone did this? Tip: Buy a “return to sender” stamp so you won’t get writer’s cramp.
2.     Hold a contest. Collect the letters and have a contest with a friend: who’s pile will get the highest within a month or who’s pile can get the tallest without toppling? Winner gets to give all the envelopes to the other to recycle.
3.     Make paper airplanes and tell your teen to toss them one by one when college reps visit his or her school and give a presentation. I guarantee they’ll have enough to last the whole hour and you won’t get another letter from that school.
4.     Answer EVERY letter they receive by sending an email to the admissions office of that school. Or better yet, forward them to the admission’s director’s home address.
5.     Estimate the environmental impact of all 400 pounds of paper you’ve received by your kid’s senior year and send an email to all the colleges that you don’t want to get into, and Cc the EPA, Greenpeace, and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).
What do you think?
BTW. Another awesome giveaway going on right now at Villabarnes.

2 comments:

Cassie Bustamante said...

i love the first and last idea the most to give the colleges the full idea of the impact they are having on the environment!!! what a waste!

Lynn Stevens said...

Ohhh I so remember these same piles of letters coming to our home day after day! I think we might still have a box of them somewhere, they make great fire starters!
So much for the paper reduction act! LOL
I still get letters from a private grade school that want my son to attend. Hes been out of collage for years now. LOL
Hugs Lynn