University releases ‘acceptance boxes’ to newly admitted students at Iowa State

Courtesy of Max Goldberg

admissions boxes

Kaylie Crowe

Iowa State has started a new project to ring in the acceptance of incoming students.

The admissions office has been creating acceptance boxes that students receive once they accept their enrollment to Iowa State. The boxes are for students entering in the fall that have accepted their official offer of admission.

Within the box, there is a sticker that says congratulations on accepting the offer of admission and reads, “You’re as amazing as the return of the fanny pack.” There is red and gold crinkle paper in the box along with a red fanny pack with the Iowa State logo on the front of it.

Every week admissions has new students accepting their offer of admissions. For the rest of this term, anybody that accepts their offer to Iowa State gets a box. The marketing and communications team did most of the work to create the boxes with help from several other staff members in the admissions office. 

 
 
 
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A post shared by Iowa State Admissions (@iowastateadmissions) on Apr 10, 2019 at 11:45am PDT

“We have all kinds of strategies that we implement in our office,” said Erica Fischer, associate director of marketing and campus visits for the Office of Admissions. “We do high school visits and college fairs. We also have counselors host yield events. We have social media campaigns. This type of project is considered a special project.”

Often people refer to May 1 as “decision day,” but at Iowa State, May 1 is not the deadline. Iowa State has a rolling admission process, which means Iowa State allows undergraduates to apply or accept right up to the beginning of classes.

The acceptance boxes just started this year. The boxes will go until the start of classes because students can accept their offer until that time.

“The online buzz that we have generated from this project has been amazing,” Fischer said. “We took photos of the room full of boxes, the mail trucks, and the person that oversees social media has been promoting it. Students post pictures, parents posts pictures, it’s definitely created the buzz we were hoping for. People are excited about it. It’s been a lot of fun.”