Receiving spam from universities?

[jehane]

Hi all

 

I did my GRE and applied to a couple of schools in January.  Before that I had been in professional work for several years, in Australia.  Since the GRE and applications I've been receiving mail from various US universities telling me about their grad school programs.  Most of it is email, but at least one brochure was sent to me by post in Australia!  Most of it is also for disciplines other than those I applied for.  Is anyone else getting these?  

[nugget]

I've been getting spam from universites in the UK and the US. Walla Walla, in particular, comes to mind. I told one of the schools I've accepted an offer so I don't want to apply and they responded with an email asking about my friends and family who might want to attend.

 

I've tried to unsubscribe to many schools. For the schools that continue to send emails, I just put their emails in the spam pile and hope that yahoo will eventually redirect their emails to the spam folder.

 

Maybe, as a joke, you could ask if you are eligible to apply with a GPA of 1.5 and they would voluntarily take you off of their list?  lol

[jehane]

Thanks, I'm glad I'm not alone!  Mostly I've only gotten one or two emails from any given university, but Columbia has been really persistent in pushing their quantitative studies program - although their last email had a subject line of approaching application deadlines so hopefully it will stop soon.  gmail has been very good about sending them to spam!  

 

I guess I'm wondering how they got my details.  I strongly suspect the GRE - I doubt the universities I actually applied to would pass on or sell my personal information to their competitors.  

[TakeruK]

There is a box when signing up for the GRE that if you don't check (or uncheck, not sure), then you will get these offers from all these schools! If you contact ETS, they can remove you from the mailing lists.

[nataraja]

Yes, this is mentioned in the Princeton GRE prep book.  ETS gets a lot of money for selling people's email addresses who are "in the market" for a grad school.