Question is general in nature, although the specific school is Washington U in St. Louis. But I’m more interested in generalities than for this school in particular. This is the first of my kids looking to go to a highly selective college without the benefit of athletic recruitment, which is a completely different process.
Daughter is a rising sophomore. We are just starting to talk about thinking about what she wants. Tentative plan is to try to visit some schools as travel takes us different places. We will be in St Louis in November, which is not somewhere we usually go. So I thought we could do a tour at Washington U to help spark her thinking about what she wants. Plus this is quite possibly the only time we will be in St Louis before application time, so if we are going to visit we really should do it now.
3 questions:
Do they even start tracking interest this early? If she ends up being interested but never visits again will it matter that she visited 2 years before she applied?
I can schedule an interview online, but that seems to be a waste of everyone's time to interview a sophomore, correct?
I signed up for the info session and tour. There is also the option to do lunch with a current student, go to an info session about a specific college, and to request meetings with departments. All of this seems like overkill for a very preliminary visit like this, but for "demonstrated interest" is that something that we should do?
Do not interview as a soph. She is at a real disadvantage in terms of maturity. Yes, register for the tour. Often they ask what year she’d be enrolling, too. I wouldn’t meet with departments at this point. I think the other things are up to her (lunch, college info session).
Yes, they will track her interest from sophomore visit. It’s not that uncommon. And I think sure it will still count as “interest” even if she doesn’t go back ever. I kind of agree with you that an interview isn’t a great idea at this point. Lots of schools do webcam or local alumni interviews, so if you skip this opportunity, there may be another when the timing is more appropriate (something you can figure out right now, actually). I also think the other things might be overkill at this point. Her main “demonstrated interest” will be the visit and then things that come into play in the application such as why she wants to attend that school. Where does WUSTL stand in their common data set on interest, anyway? Is it Strongly Considered? Even so, I still think that just the visit is fine, and that interest is mostly used as a weed-out as in a stopper for those applicants who have never visited. Any additional or bonus “interest” would be such a minor factor compared to the rest of her application. But that’s just my guess as a parent!
Agree not to interview – and adding, almost all the schools we looked at did not permit interviews for any student not at least in spring of junior year.
That’s interesting the CDS only says considered, b/c word on the CC street is that Wash U is known very much for taking demonstrated interest into account.
“word on the CC street is that Wash U is known very much for taking demonstrated interest into account.”
I’ve heard the same - repeatedly. And when we went on the tour of Wash U, the AO who gave the general info session also said demonstrated interest is very important. They are leery of being treated as a safety school for kids who really want to go to another college, similar to the way the phrase “Tufts Syndrome” originated.
If it were my sophomore, I wouldn’t schedule lunch with a current student or schedule an info session with a specific department. Do I know for sure if they might give her a little less credit for demonstrating interest if she doesn’t do those things? No, I’m not sure although my guess would be that doing the general tour would be enough to demonstrate interest. Plus, the risk of it all being too much/boring would outweigh the potential 1/2 extra brownie point she might get by doing those things. Just a guess and comment on how I’d assess this in our particular situation.
That’s pretty much my thinking @milee30. I think an hour at an info session and an hour plus on a tour and she is probably going to be done. At that point she will be probably thinking about the soccer tourney that brought us there and not the college. Or more likely wondering why her neurotic dad has her doing an all day college visit as a sophomore.
Everybody is different and it’s become apparent on some of the threads that I’m an outlier in this area, so take it for what it’s worth - but I find the whole tour/info session thing tedious bordering on torturous. WashU’s tour and info session felt long, long, long to me. The info session was the least organized and least impressive of any we attended (but again, others have had fantastic experiences and loved it.) Unfortunately, my kid was so turned off he didn’t even apply. I’m not telling you this because I think it’s not a great school or that you shouldn’t apply, just wanted to put it out there FWIW if you think you have a kid who isn’t especially into it to begin with.
If it were my kid and I knew she wasn’t especially interested and we were just doing it to check the two boxes of demonstrated interest and giving her a first look, I wouldn’t even do the info session at all. Skip the info session and do only the tour. She’ll get credit for the demonstrated interest of visiting campus and the tour is at least moving around, so even if you get a guide that’s not great, at least you’re moving around and seeing interesting things.
Don’t interview as a sophomore…I do interviews as an alumni for CWRU and one time I had a sophomore…something didn’t seem right to me because he had no leadership experience at that point…once I discovered he was a sophomore it made sense.
google “WUSTL Common Data Set” and
then look in Section C7: Relative importance of each of the following academic and nonacademic factors in first-time, firstyear,degree-seeking (freshman) admission decisions.
Then look at “Level of applicant’s interest”
For WUSTL it is Considered.
They will track interest. I think the regular tour would be good at this point.