Of course classroom rigor and test scores are what make the biggest differences. But after looking at a Naviance scattergram that showed that high ranking people were rejected from my school, I started thinking: while Case Western categorizes interest as “important” on their Common Data Set, is showing interest more of a thing that is “very important”?
Imagine you are an admissions officer at Case.
You have two people with 750 M 750 CR that apply.
These people may have applied to Caltech and MIT as well.
One signs up for emails, and visits campus.
One does nothing.
Which one do you admit?
The one that has taken some effort to show interest in your University, not the one who is applying as a back up.
But if you had a SAT1500 and an SAT 1000 that does everything ever that shows interest, that is not enough to make you rise above.
I think it is very important at Case in distinguishing from among those students who have the rigor and test scores. At an admissions event, we were told the acceptance rate for students with ACT’s in the 34-36 range is essentially the same as for those in the 31-33 range. (They gave the numbers. I don’t remember, but I think it was around 52% for 34-36 and 50% for 31-33.) Same thing for unweighted GPA in core courses 3.80-4.00 versus 3.60-3.79. I remember it because I was so surprised.
That tells me that once you are qualified, they really look at other factors to determine acceptance. You need to have something that distinguishes you among the qualified - and interest is one of the things that will do it.
@bopper That last part makes sense. If you’re nowhere near the bubble, I guess it would be a long shot.