<p>Hello, please advise. My D has applied to Amherst ED and does not wish to spend the evening. Therefore, she has not followed their regular visiting procedures whereas students spend the night in a dorm, and then attend classes the next day. She has, however, contacted a professor vis email who has set her up with another bio student for the day. She can pick up a free lunch card from Admissions upon arriving. My question is, how will ad. com. know that she spent the day in classes? We feel that if they know this, it can only help her, because in their eyes she will show lots of interest beyond the application process. But how do we get the message to admissions that she did spend the day in classes? I hope this thread makes sense to those reading it.</p>
<p>Find out who the regional rep is for your part of the country (call and ask). Send that person an e-mail to let them know about the visit and your daughter's interest. If Amherst does any local recruting make sure your child goes.</p>
<p>You could also send an email to the admissions office requesting some specific information that comes up as a result of the visit. It's a nice way to tell them about the visit without sounding like you are trying to earn brownie points.</p>
<p>Can't she stop by the admissions office during the day?</p>
<p>If she picks up the free lunch card, then all she has to do is sign in</p>
<p>To reiterate kwyjibo's point, it's a good idea to stop by the admissions office. They usually have a sign in of some kind, even if you don't wish an interview.</p>
<p>Otherwise, the admissions forms themselves sometimes have a box to check off, and in most you will have a chance to mention your visits in your essays or short answers. I don't know specifically about Amherst, however.</p>
<p>The essays on the application provide an opportunity to communicate things like that. Specifically, the "Why Amherst?" essay would be the logical place.</p>
<p>Normally, your daughter would speak specifically about her experiences on campus in her essay of Why Amherst. Do they have such an essay prompt on the application? If not, then usually I would have the student discuss why this is their first choice school in a cover letter with the application and their specific reasons would be intertwined with mentioning things they gleaned from doing X, Y and Z on a campus visit. </p>
<p>However, I get the feeling that your D's application is already sent in and now she is doing her visit. She should stop by admissions. Also, she can send a follow up letter to her regional adcom and include any updates since her application was filed....if some accomplishment, award or significant activity has occured but also she can relate that she was recently on campus and what she did and how it reiterated her reasons for why Amherst is her first choice (and what those reasons are). </p>
<p>If she has an alum interview, she also can bring up specifics of her visit.</p>
<p>Susan</p>
<p>Another nice thing to do is to send a thank you email to the professor whose class she attended, and the secretary in the dep't who probably helped her set up the opp'ty to sit in on the class. All she has to do is cc the admissions office in her thank you email. Enough said.</p>
<p>She has already sent in the application. I love the idea about a thank you note to the professor and then cc'ed to the ad. dept. If thead. dept. received this, would they automatically put it in her folder?</p>
<p>Having watched the admissions process for several years now, I think the importance of contact with the campus, including visits, is one of the most misunderstood parts of the process.</p>
<p>This whole concern arose a few years ago whent the Wall Street Journal published an article about how some "safety" schools, and F&M was used as an example, had started rejecting kids who appeared to be overqualified and had not visited the campus or otherwise shown interest. </p>
<p>So, how widespread is this attitude on the part of admissions? Hard to say, but you can bet the elite schools like Amherst are NOT worried about being viewed as a "safety school"!</p>
<p>There are several problems with this whole fixation on contacts and keeping admissions aware of every contact, email, phone call and so forth. </p>
<ul>
<li> it leads to email overload for admissions.<br></li>
<li> it can lack sincerity, and adcoms are very good at sniffing this out.<br></li>
<li> the schools that care about contacts are pretty good at tracking it. A sign in book at admissions is a good tip off. More formal intro programs are another (contrasted with the cattle drives used by, for example, Harvard...). Just pay close attention to what they ask and say in their view book materials. For example, smaller schools like Rochester and Oberlin use on campus interviews as a good filter.</li>
</ul>
<p>Anyway, I'd use some common sense and respect for adcoms time (how do you like it at work when a subordinate copies you on every email - just to let you know?) and remember that the elites don't need to be told or shown you are interested. They assume it, perhaps a bit arrogantly.</p>
<p>very well said, thank you.</p>
<p>I think applying ED to the school speaks to your daughter's interest.</p>
<p>newmassdad, I agree with you on common sense grounds. But D's GC during her Junior yr. in NYC public high school said adcoms track inquiries and higher numbers mean "demonstrated interest."</p>
<p>BJM-
I think pyewacket is correct on this one. While newmassdad makes some good points, you can't really compare the college application process to copying your co-workers or sending out mass distribution emails. Coworkers don't care. Adcomms do. While yes, obviously applying ED is a clear indication of demonstrated interest, when push comes to shove, and the adcomms are reading files, that extra piece of paper showing your participation in a class and your courtesy thank you could make all the difference. I don't think it is cheezy. Adcomms are plenty bright. They can separate the wheat from the chaff. Sending a copy of a thank you note is different than sending a box of cookies.
By the way, if you've had contact with a specific person in the admissions office, thats who I'd cc the email to. If you had the same receptionist at the Amherst admissions desk who sat there doing her knitting and not much else, no telling what she'll do with more paperwork!</p>
<p>Having applied Early Decision is the best indicator of interest. If that isn't enough to get your daughter admitted, finding a way to tell them that you actually viewed the campus won't be. Especially since she made the decision to not spend the time participating in the way that the college set up for prospective students, I wouldn't then try to find a way to 'score brownie points', as someone else put it. Having a few friends and family members who have been adcoms over the years, 'demonstrated interest' is highly overrated, especially at THIS time of year in admissions offices.</p>
<p>Thanks for the feedback! I do believe a thank you note is warranted, regardless of where it goes. Certainly one to the professor, one to the student who took her time to help my D out, and one copy to the admissions office would be a nice touch. We are not going to ask for the letter to be placed in her file; as we should leave that up to them to decide. Usually, if the professor is on the mark, he/she will tell the ad. com. anyway. I would think that Amherst would welcome that advice from their profs.</p>
<p>I agree with Alwaysmom -- how much more interest can you show a college than by your applying ED? If your application is already in, I don't think notifying them of your visit "after the fact" is really going to impress them. In fact, they might wonder why your D waited until after her ED application was submitted to actually attend one of their campus tours/information sessions.</p>
<p>This is not a campus tour or info session. We already did that months ago. This visit is to specifically attend a bio class and lab with a bio student. Very different scenario.</p>
<p>My kids ALWAYS wrote thank you's to professors and students and anyone else who met with them on campus. However, they NEVER copied these to admissions. They did not write these letters with the hopes that the adcoms would know that they had. They wrote them in a geniuine way and to be appreciative. I recall a few years ago on this forum, a father who was a frequent poster, recommending to copy all the correspondence the child had with folks on campus back to the admissions office. I never had my kids do that because they have written so many letters to faculty, students, coaches, etc. who they met with and so forth. That would clutter up their file and be cumbersome. But what they DID do is on the applications, they spoke specifically why they wanted to go to that college and wove in what they did on visits or who they spoke to or classes they observed, etc. and what was appealing or a good match for them. So, it came out in their reasons for attending, just what they did on the visits. That's where I think it is appropriate to mention this. Sure, the thank you's MUST be done for their own purposes, not for admission brownie points. I suppose someone the student writes COULD speak to admissions on the student's behalf but that is icing on top. I recall when my D wrote a dance dept. head at Tufts and thanked her for meeting with her and she described what was appealing to her in that department as far as her EC interest and wove it into her background and what she'd like to do there if she were to attend, that faculty person wrote back and said she was going to be forwarding this information to the admissions office. I have no idea if others ever did that but this person made it a point of saying she'd be telling admissions about my D. </p>
<p>For the OP, the application is already in. I don't know if it is that necessary to do anything now (other than thank you notes as always should be done). But my suggestion still stands that if you want to, she could send a followup letter to her regional adcom mentioning what she did on the visit and how it reaffirmed that Amherst was her first choice. This would have been better, however, if the letter coincided with another reason to be writing, such as an update of some new award or accomplishment or experience that arose since she applied. </p>
<p>Susan</p>