Many of the schools I have on Common App ask this question. Why do they care? (other than possibly studying marketing strategies) Will answering this in any way impact admission chances?
It may demonstrate your interest depending on your answer.
I can’t imagine it matters how you first hear of a college. I think this is for the school’s own information. Ex. the school might want to know if it was worthwhile to give local presentations, do mailings, talk with guidance counselors in your HS, if word of mouth on the school from current students is good etc. My kids were honest and wrote different things for different schools that asked (ex. guidance counselor recommendation, own research, mailing sent to house, friend at school etc. and it didn’t seem to matter one bit in admissions). Just don’t put in something frivolous/insulting (ex. threw dart at a map and it landed on your school) and you will be fine.
Showing “demonstrated interest” in a school comes after you first hear of a school.
EVERYTHING on the application matters. They are receiving 10s of thousands of these things. They don’t want any information they don’t need.
Might make for a good story. Might shed some light on you and how you think.
I first heard about my chosen college on an old radio show. It made for a romantic story and allowed for a digression into my family background. My son heard about his at a college fair, but it was a college fair that he crashed with some highly motivated friends, and so the story of how the kids went there, on their own, in disguise, was entertaining.
I also think that many schools use it for marketing purposes. They are out there advertising their schools in various ways through mailing, email, ads on sites such as cc, etc. They want to find out which of their advertising methods is working and which are not.
I’m sure it gets used for market research, but if this was mostly about marketing, they’d use a drop down menu for the most common answers to make the data easier to handle and analyze. Unless things have changed since I applied, that’s not what they do, they are usually free form responses with character limits of several sentences. Applicants should be using every opportunity on an application that they can to demonstrate fit:
If the someone (e.g. college counselor, family member, friend) mentioned the school to you, why did they mention the school to you? I don’t walk around telling literally every high schooler I encounter about Brown. I only mention it if there is reason to.
If you got an email or letter from the school, why did you bother to read it? I’m assuming you’re like most people and you don’t read literally every email/piece of mail that enters your inbox.
Similarly, if you saw an ad somewhere, what about the ad caught your eye? Do you remember/look into every product you see advertised? I’m guessing you don’t.