Worth the time/ expense to visit before applying or given the long odds to save potential visit for post-acceptance?
@uncommondad many schools say that they do not track demonstrated interest as part of their admissions decisions. I believe that is the case with many (if not all) of the Ivies as well as other highly selective schools. But each school usually indicates in their admission information if interest is tracked/considered. This can mean visits, contacting admissions, etc… Also, keep your eye out for the local visitsby Admissions to your area. Many schools will have presentations in an area hotel…usually it is a group of 4 or 5 schools.
MAsecondtimer–Do the admissions officers get the names of attendees to those hotel things? I took my son to one years ago, but don’t recall any school-specific sign ins, and the poor reps were being mobbed by pushy parents. My kid couldn’t get a word in to any of them.
Princeton and Pennsylvania consider “level of applicant’s interest”, according to their entries on http://www.collegedata.com .
save the trip for post April 1 notification day.
The Ivys’ have 10Xs as many applicants as spots open.
“demonstrated” interest does not mean anything to them.
BUT, if your D or S is asked to interview by an alumni rep, make SURE that they do so.
You demonstrate interest by applying ED/SCEA. Lesser expressions of interest are not likely to be meaningful. If the trip is a pain in the neck for you, you can safely defer it (unless you need it in order to feel good about an ED application).
^Exactly. The Ivies aren’t tracking your campus visit or appearance when their rep speaks at the local college fair or visits your school. They don’t have to. Now others schools admissions reps, who are spying for potential applicants – may value a relationship w/an applicant or applicant’s family.
HYPMS aren’t going to devote those resources – they have a surfeit of ED/EA and RD applicants.
So, let’s say you are an admissions officer and you have two equally juicy applicants. One says numerous times in essays and whatnot that your college is their number one choice. The other does not.
You can only admit one more. Which one do you offer?
Is that “tracking” the level of applicant’s interest?
I (a parent) have attended 2 of these hotel marketing sessions in my area for highly selective (but not Ivy) schools and they both had sign in sheets.
If you are HYPSM, you don’t care, because you’re virtually everyone’s first choice, and practically everyone you admit shows up in the class. In fact, if you’re Harvard, you might think it sounds a little gauche, unless the statements are all about your extraordinary fit for Math 55 or Let’s Go or something that is truly unique to Harvard.
“One says numerous times in essays and whatnot that your college is their number one choice”
Using the all important essays to tell an Ivy admissions officer that their school is the students #1 choice is not only foolish on the students part, but a waste of ink. The ad mins want to learn something new about the student in the essays, not how much the student wants to go there.
The top colleges have 10X’s the number of qualified applicants to spots open.
@menloparkmom Ummmm…okay…so, what’s your answer to the question? You accept the one who doesn’t say anything about their interest in your school?
The mere act of applying is indication enough that the student wants to go there. They accept the one that brings something new, or different to the mix of students. Or they do a coin toss. Who knows?
The biggest problem Ivy admins have each year is deciding who NOT to admit. Because so many are qualified. That statement is repeated every year by the deans of Admissions at every Ivy.
It’s actually not indication enough. Witness the students who apply to all of the Ivies. They don’t want to go to all of them, they want to go to one of them.
Yeah, but that’s a small group of students, and the colleges don’t know which ones they are.
Really? Don’t get fixated on it necessarily being all eight. What are the chances that a competitive student is only applying to one selective school?
Penn and Cornell do worry about their yield – that’s why they have ED. That’s the demonstrated interest that matters. They know darn well that RD applicants who get into Harvard or Yale are going to Harvard or Yale, regardless of whatever claims they may have made in their essays or whether they’ve visited or not.
There are several ways schools track demonstrated interest and a visit is just one of them. Most schools realize that not everyone can afford to visit so they don’t hold it against you. There are plenty of other ways they track your level of interest.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/education/how-college-applications-change-era-big-data
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-kent-barnds/does-big-data-know-best-n_b_3460096.html
Ideally, it should be clear through each application that :
-You would benefit from what that particular college/university has to offer; and
- You have thought about the particular college/university, and have imagined the possibilities at that college/university for you.
That’s the kind of student at least one of these places is looking for (according to close paraphrase of published direct quote from associate dean). It is probably not alone.
If you address these points with appropriate specificity, that in itself would establish some level of demonstrated interest, at least. IMO.
My kid told his Harvard interviewer that he hadn’t applied SCEA because it wasn’t his first choice. The interviewer spent the rest of the interview trying to persuade him that Harvard was just as good as MIT. Harvard ended up accepting him, while MIT did not. So as far as I can see Harvard definitely doesn’t care if you are their first choice if they like you enough.