<p>Recently we attended a college fair. One of the admission reps at a second tier LAC told us that they do not take demonstrated interest into account for admissions.</p>
<p>This particular school is very good, but definetly not a top 20 LAC.</p>
<p>So what gives? If these schools do not want to be used as a safety for really high achievers and presumably they are interested in protecting their yield, why wouldn't they be interested in students who are interested in them?</p>
<p>Doesn’t seem unreasonable to me for a school to assume that if you’ve taken the trouble to apply, that you are interested in them.</p>
<p>The only school I see in the USNews 20-30 LAC ranking that says on its common data sest that doesn’t consider interest at all is the University of Richmond. Their yield last year was 25%, which is actually higher than other schools who do say they consider interest.</p>
<p>I think these schools have very sophisticated yield management techniques. They know from experience how likely someone with your demographic and scores is to come. Plus yield can be easily manipulated via the waitlist should they so choose.</p>
<p>There are tons of angsting posts on CC about demonstrating interest–visiting or not visiting, interviewing or not interviewing, what to tell school X about other schools you are applying to. Perhaps this is a savvy marketing ploy on the part of the school. Maybe they don’t care if you use them as a safety knowing that a) you may, in fact, need to go to your safety and b) they have ways (merit money and other perks) to turn themselves into an attractive alternative once your choices are known. Check out all the recent posts by kids seriously choosing between full pay dream school and full ride last choice school.</p>
<p>I get all that. But why use all kinds of sophisticated ways of manipulating or predicting yield and ignore or almost ignore a very simple way? Seems curious to me.</p>
<p>The process of showing interest has changed so much in recent years that many very interested students don’t show up as being interested using old-school interest measurement techniques. In-person visits, fairs and even interviews are rapidly being replaced by virtual experiences and web presences. An email address is often the only thing tying a student to their school before admission, making it more difficult to gauge interest these days.</p>
<p>All schools care about yield and no school wants to be someone’s safety. If you accept that statement as pretty accurate, then an applicant showing real interest should at least be considered…</p>
<p>Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t think whether a student considers the school a safety comes into consideration at all in most admissions decisions. Also, schools seem to use their ED applicants and wait lists to adjust yield, so I don’t think yield predictions play much of a role in individual admissions decisions in the RD rounds either.</p>
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<p>Many schools do not care if their yield is low, as long as they can predict it reasonably.</p>
<p>They might believe that measuring “level of applicant’s interest” adds little or no value to yield prediction (as opposed to raising the yield), or that applicants have increasingly become adept at gaming the “level of applicant’s interest” criterion. There may also be undesirable results (e.g. counting visits may have the side effect of screening out non-local non-wealthy applicants who cannot afford to visit before the admissions decision is made, or applicants pestering admissions offices by phone and email with trivial questions to “show interest”, etc.).</p>
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<p>Pretty sure that community colleges and less selective four year schools know that they are many students’ safeties.</p>
<p>Many schools know that they are safeties and are fine with it. They want to be able to report that a certain proportion of their student body had SATs over 650 or 700 or were in the top 10% of their class, and know that most kids with these scores are going to at least shoot for something higher. So, being a safety school is how they fill these boxes in their student profile.</p>
<p>When you come down to it – what is a merit scholarship? Essentially, it’s a bribe saying, “we know you probably will get into schools you prefer, but we’ll give you money to come here”. Same thing – helps the school fill the boxes in their profiles.</p>
<p>Other schools believe that they can fill their class with qualified students who want to be there and will take into account expressed interest.</p>
<p>Yield I don’t believe is a factor on USNews rankings and it doesn’t seem like schools care about yield too much as long as they don’t end up over or under guessing.</p>
<p>I always learn so much on this site.</p>