Curious - I hear it matters but then sheer numbers of kids moving through make me second guess this. Do they track who comes to visit? Do they look for this when applications come in? Would a second visit to a specific school within Tech matter or help? Thanks.
Google their Common Data Set to find out. If they care about interest, be sure you sign in at Admissions if you visit.
I believe it’s considered but not weighted very much. Essentially if it’s coming down to that then you are already in a bad spot for admissions
@11BB66 Demonstrated interest may not carry a lot of weight in the big picture, but consider if it’s an admissions decision between two kids with comparable stats and one is in the logs with a campus and specific college visit and the other hasn’t visited at all. There was a lot of discussion on CC around acceptance time about kids being deferred or wait listed at some schools because the university potentially thought the student was using them as a 2nd choice or safety because the student didn’t visit.
They are collecting the data, that much you know. With the complexity involved in the admissions process re: how many offers to make and predicting how many will be accepted, why wouldn’t a university with the technical horsepower like VT put that data to use somehow?
You should visit - just because it’s a great campus. If you go during an open house weekend you can also knock out an info session with the college your student would apply into. As competitive as 2019 admissions might be (VT’s acceptance rate is believed to have dropped pretty substantially from 2017 to 2018 incoming classes), why not give your student any edge they can get?
My son made the mistake of not going on an “official” visit. He had been there a number of times so didn’t feel he needed to. It hurt him. He also should have applied ED but because he wasn’t sure, he didn’t. His stats were above the 75th for test scores and in the middle 50th for GPA but he didn’t get in. You just never know.
Visiting is not a factor in the admissions process and does not impact admissions decisions in any way.
-Alphonso Garrett
@VTAdmissions VT’s common data set for 2017-18 shows that “level of applicant’s interest” is considered by admissions.
@VTAdmissions … that’s interesting because that is not what we were told in an info session. Regardless, that is good to know for those applying for the class of 2019.
With the adoption of Coalition App, the application pool will be huge this year. They had 32,000 apps last year. I’ll bet they hit 40,000 this year. Campus visits will carry very little, if any, weight.
I didn’t see any place on the application or essays that would have you indicate whether you visited or not. We did the engineering info session but how will they know that?
@thessaly1 did you sign in at the engineering info session?
@4gsmom Yes, but do you think the engineering department provides that info to admissions?