Mail From Colleges

My sister is a high schooler receiving mail about going to college.  Out of curiosity, I went through a little bit of it today.  It makes sense that they would try to send out mail that have students on them that the recipients can identify with.  This gem was especially great.

Private Colleges and Universities sent my sister two of nearly the same magazine.  I guess that they weren't sure what profile she fits.  See if you can spot the difference.  

The magazine on the left promotes "Tips and Tricks for Scholarship Search", while the magazine on the right promotes "89 Selective Schools," All of the other aspects are the same....  Oh, except for the image of the student on the front. 

I flipped through each page of each magazine.  Most of the content is identical.  Different schools advertise in each magazine though.  As I suspected from the cover, the one on the right contains schools that on average are higher ranked.  Notice Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, NYU, Stanford, etc that are quite absent in the magazine on the left. 

Of course, a voice in my head says that it could just be coincidence that the students on the cover have the races that they do. Maybe the colleges that place the ads are the ones to blame here.  I looked at the magazine's website, and although their staff appears to be entirely Caucasian (or at least look that way in small black and white photos), their publication stock photos seem to have been chosen for the purpose of representing everybody in a politically correct way.  So I instead think that they knew exactly what they were doing when they created these versions of the magazines.

On a less serious note, this is a fantastically amusing crop job around this model's head.   

P.S. I'm guessing that there are versions with male students on the cover.  If any of you come across one, I am curious as to how it differs.