<p>D14 and I have visited a few colleges already and I have perused the Common Data Set and looked at what weight many of the schools put into "Demonstrated Interest." We're planning on an east coast visit as well as looking at some schools in California. D14 is looking for a mid-sized university (unfortunately I can't talk her into smaller LAC's) and I was wondering which schools really put weight on visiting their campuses. I realize that state schools are less likely to care. Ideally, she would be interested in schools with 5000-10,000 students.</p>
<p>I think you’re correct that demonstrated interest is of greatest potential significance with private schools. In terms of gauging how important, I don’t think you can generalize on the basis of locale and size. I think you have to identify your target schools and then try to find out specifically, for each one, how much it matters. The trips that you have scheduled will demonstrate interest at each of the schools on the trip, so long as you sign up for an information session or tour, stop in the admissions office, etc. Just walking or driving through anonymously probably won’t help much.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how much weight to put on a claim in the CDS that demonstrated interest matters. I think many schools say that, but some mean it more than others. Your concern will be if a new target school emerges after the trips are over – do you block out time and money to make an additional trip before applying, or do you just apply, knowing that you’re weak in the demonstrated interest category? The cost/benefit balance of that will be unique to each family, and with each target school. But CollegeConfidential and your guidance counselor should be two of the best resources available to you at that time, in terms of trying to assess the importance of demonstrated interest at that school.</p>
<p>Ironically, at some schools, if you are at the top of their applicant pool, demonstrated interest becomes more important, because they don’t want to be used as a safety. It hurts their realization numbers. They want to send acceptance letters to people who will actually show up.</p>
<p>I have also heard of people who think they showed too much love, early on, and were then shortchanged on merit money. They believe that they flagged themselves as people who were definitely coming, and so they weren’t recruited as aggressively with money.</p>
<p>Are you planning your trip around making sure you get to those schools that care most deeply about demonstrated interest? I am not sure you have to do that–there are other ways to demonstrate interest.You can do online chats, talk with a rep at a college fair locally, etc. </p>
<p>(I know GWU and American both care about demonstrated interest, but this doesn’t translate to expecting every prospective student to fly across the country to visit. However, if you are local and you don’t manage to drag yourself to campus in person, I’m told they may not take that well.)</p>
<p>I think you should plan your trip around seeing those schools that you actually ARE most interested in!</p>
<p>Our experience was that the Common Data Set information really is quite accurate. If a school lists student interest in the CDS as “important” or “very important,” it is. You can trust that.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your thoughtful replies. I think our biggest hamstring is just finding enough time/resources to see each school so we want to make sure we use them wisely. I will revisit the CDS on the schools we are considering visiting. Thanks again!</p>
<p>Interest can also be demonstrated by stopping at the school’s table at a college fair and chatting/signing in, attending a regional dinner or event, making a mail or email inquiry (asking a question of admissions, perhaps), and so on. I imagine official visits and interviews are best but not the only way.</p>
<p>I know one local selective LAC has a system of “points” for different interactions (visited when college came to high school, emailed, requested info, made account on web site, came to campus, etc) in their interest equation.</p>
<p>There is no way you can guess which schools care about this. When my kid went through the process I was surprised that Brown didn’t even want you to sign in at all for an admissions visit and yet other schools like Swarthmore wanted entire cards filled out. I would see the schools that most interest your kid without much regard to “demonstrated interest” but aside from CDS notations, you can post on individual college forums to see what the insiders think about this at each school. No doubt you can express this interest without a visit to a distant school by going to a regional info session.</p>
<p>If your D is 14 years old, it is a little early to do a lot of visiting… unless she has at least PSAT scores, you can’t really tell much. Her interests may also change a lot in the next couple of years… a few visits are okay, but I would not get into it too deeply this year (this from a parent who visited 20 schools with D2!).</p>
<p>If you visit tables at college fairs, be sure to see if they have cards to fill out. Also look at potential schools admission sites and get the name of admissions rep for your area/state. Contact them directly and see when they are in the area.</p>
<p>D14 means daughter, class of 2014. This student is a Jr and the right age to be visiting schools seriously.</p>
<p>If a school says in its CDS that it does not care about demonstrated interest, you can bank on that. Caring about demonstrated interest is less certain. Brown says it cares in its CDS, but as someone pointed out above thread, it doesn’t even keep track of campus admissions visitors, and obviously, it’s not worried about yield the way a less selective school might be.</p>
<p>Another way to show interest is to have interviews with the college rep when they are in your area. We needed to do that for a few schools we just couldn’t get to before D submitted her application. It worked out really well. When we did visit, she was already a known quantity and it made the visit even more rewarding. A couple of schools set up depatment interviews and class visits for her.</p>
<p>Blueiguana, I thought CC parents typically put the kid’s age (not class) after their “S” or “D” abbreviation… I agree that the timing is very appropriate if her D is a HS junior this year. :)</p>
<p>Intparent - the OP posts in the parents thread for hs 2014, where I also have a student, and this is the abbreviation they use. I was simply clarifying. I usually assume a number after D or S is a graduation year, but that’s just me. In this case it is how the OP was using it.</p>