<p>Hello all. It has seemed to me from reading various posts that Emory considers the amount of interest one shows prior to applying. Am I imagining this? If I'm not, how does one show interest, because I am interested from what I've heard from my GC and the like. I feel like this is a really easy question to find and answer too, but I think I wil get a better understanding from CC</p>
<p>Yes demonstrated interested is very important since the Emory adcoms really want to admit people who are likely to enroll. You can show it by either applying ED I or II (ED I if Emory is your first choice, ED II if it’s your second but you didn’t get into your first), visiting the campus, ordering a video or something from them, going to regional admissions info sessions, making prior contact with a faculty member, or writing a really inspiring “Why Emory?” essay in their supplemental application. In the supplemental app they have a section that asks you to check off all the previous contacts you’ve made with Emory whether it is the visit or attending the info session and also ask for the specifics behind it (ie which faculty was it, the location and date of the info session). And for the “Why Emory?” essay, you like any “why do you want to come to THIS college?” essay the guideline is that at least one your reasons should be specific to just Emory; if everything you say is something you can also say about another college, then you are not being specific enough.</p>
<p>The fact that you can write all those suggestions indicates how easily the “demonstrated interest” can be gamed as just another hoop to jump through for a student desperate to get into any and every top 20, including one they would never consider attending provided they get in elsewhere. Emory needs to drop this and find another way to screen for this while also diversifying the interests of incoming students in the recruiting process. Perhaps they can ask questions like: “Choose a tenet of Emory’s vision or mission and tell us about anything unique that you would want to do at Emory that fulfills the tenet” or Have a prompt telling about current direction of the university and the type of environment it wants to create and ask the student to explain how they would fit into such plans. Basically design things that make people actually think about what the school is trying to do and then picture how they fit into this larger goal instead of finding out “do they want to go HERE?” I feel only EDs screen for this effectively. All other techniques just screen how badly students want to attend a top 20 to get the well reputed degree and take up the space of the institution. This especially goes for Emory where it is even unclear as to why many of the students were so desperate to go to a top school anyway. They certainly didn’t come here for its education, principles, or because they wanted to do cool things while here. We need to make students show that they have a desire to contribute something legit other than their existence in the classroom or social scene while also making them aware (and care) of what this place is about.</p>
<p>While on our last visit to Emory - April 2012 - the admissions counselor said the new director has squashed the value of demonstrated interest and admissions would be much more focused on scores, grades, course rigor, essays and recommendations.</p>
<p>I wonder if they were telling the truth or bluffing. It would be a nice bluff to discourage students from exploring the school in ways that look more like “jumping through hoops” to demonstrate interest. The default measures are indeed very quantitative, and honestly, it will be hard to get people with high stats that actually want to come here unless we do it more based upon fit, which would mean we need to add more meaningful essay prompts to the supplement and make them mandatory instead of optional (which may in the short term decrease app. numbers, but we’ll at least get those really considering coming and not those who apply “just because”). We can also get a more select pool by requiring like 1 SAT II or something. I mean, going based upon those things alone only works to a certain extent. In fact, despite the fact that Emory uses demonstrated interest, I still think the adcoms are really just choosing some spread of SATs and GPAs with no idea of what they actually want from the incoming class other than those things. So we get students with decent scores, but ones that don’t fit into the picture of what Emory seems like it aspires to be (if it knows). Unfortunately, currently the essays (Unfortunate that the rollercoaster one is optional. Actually, maybe they should change it every year) are too vague to draw and differentiate more of the types that Emory is currently seeking in greater abundance. People can continue to put that they want to come here for the weather, CDC, and access to research. 2 of 3 which they could have gotten at say Stanford or Duke. Other than the CDC (which they normally don’t appreciate or use anyway), they need not reveal anything unique that they seek to gain from here. Essays should be reoriented to gain more insightful and less gameable responses that looks into a students personality and checks to see if they have a real reason to come other than it looking good.</p>