D20 has two separate email accounts. Should she be using just one for college tour sign-ups, school website visits, etc. i just want to make sure she gets “credit” for all of the touch points with each college.
Any insight would be helpful. Thx.
If/when your daughter visits, she will sign in at the admissions office. If she does any online webinars or the like, she should use the email address for that school…but in my experience, when you sign up for those, you also include your name and email. If she does an alumni interview, that will be logged also.
I don’t think colleges care much about just looking at their website. Showing interest is more about DOING than just reading.
One account might be easier for her to track. However, as long as she is opening all the emails (that shows DI), I don’t think it makes a big difference either way. It might be a good idea to consistently use the same email for the same college to make it easier on the college in case they do track DI, but she can keep both her accounts.
D20 should have one email account dedicated solely to college admissions/standardized testing to ensure everything is in one place.
With that out of the way, colleges will match up the contact points, so I would not be too concerned.
But…again I say…simply going to the website day after day is not demonstrating interest.
The most hilarious NPR broadcast I’ve ever heard was with an adcom from IIRC, Georgia Tech or UGA. He was giving blooper examples. One was a mom who sent her kid an email saying she would pay him $5 every time he opened the schools website to “show his demonstrated interest”. Only problem was…she emailed it to the college instead of her kid. And the adcom said…opening the website a lot does not show demonstrated interest. Anyone could do that.
Hoping someone else has the link to that NPR podcast because really…it’s a must do!
Thumper1, serves the college right…they initiated the game!
"serves the college right…they initiated the game! "
I don’t see how the college got “served” in this situation.
But how does the college know it’s the same student with a common name like say “Jennifer Smith” and 50 prospective applicants have the exact same name. Is the unique identifier DOB not email address or physical address? Maybe I’m over thinking this but for the College Board registration she uses a sbc global email account and for registering for college tours uses a gmail account. Maybe she needs to be consistent. In addition, her sbc global email account was set-up when she was very young and the name is kinda cutesty and not real “professional”, something she wouldn’t really want adcoms to see. Ok for a 10yo but probably not the best account for a 17yo applying to colleges.
Which email is she using with the COLLEGES? That is the one she should consistently use.
It sounds like the gmail account is the one. NOT the one used to register for the College Board.
@thumper1 that’s the question, she is just starting to research colleges and sign up for college tours / visits and the reason for my post. I think the answer is she should use her gmail account for all correspondence with colleges but she wasn’t sure as she had used the other account for college test sites and maybe signing up for summer programs etc. i will encourage her to use the gmail account in the future. This has been helpful.
The colleges are NOT going to care what email she used to sign up for the SAT or to have the Profile sent. They aren’t going to care what email she used to sign up for summer programs.
The email she has used for the colleges should be the one she uses for…the colleges.
But really…her “interest” needs to be meaningful…not just hits on their website. Decent questions to her adcom, participation in webinars that some schools have, attending functions in your area, tours and info sessions, etc.
Senders can tell if an email is opened, not opened and sitting in the inbox or deleted without opening.
@thumper1 Thanks for the laughs - I found the broadcast: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/504/how-i-got-into-college - Act One: The Old College Try.
Not exactly. If return receipt is off, and if downloading pictures is off, the sender cannot tell anything.
If either is on, the sender can tell if the message has been opened.
Re: #11
Not necessarily.
To ensure that the sender sees that you opened the email, read it with all image display enabled (some people disable images when reading on mobile to avoid slowness or data use). If using web mail, disable any tracking protection while reading it.
Pity the more spammy colleges don’t take the hint of all the deleted unopened mails and stop sending then!
More seriously, preview panels on some programs mean you can read an email without “opening” it at all. They surely can’t use this too closely as a serious indicator, any more than they can infer anything from for example deleting webinar emails when you’ve already attended a tour, a local info session, interviewed and done 2 other webinars?
Here is how one of my kids showed interest at one of her colleges.
- Visited and did info session and tour...and signed in.
- Emailed department chairs for specific information, and also asked admissions about specific interests and how the college might meet those.
- Went to local college sponsored event.
- Interviewed with enrollment manager when he was doing interviews in our region.
- Visited a second time, and had a private instrument lesson (she was NOT a music major) plus toured her department of interest.
- Sent snail mail thank you notes to the enrollment manager fo the interview time, and to the tour guides and admissions office for their time as well.
- Sent one updated piece of information to admissions after application was sent in.
This school really knew she was interested.
The kid read the website…once.
I’ve never seen an adcom comment about emails opened. Some will have a supp question about how you know the college. If you know a student or alum, sure, you can mention it, if asked. Or campus visits and so on.
But true “demonstrated interest,” the sort that advances your chances, is in the app and supp, themselves. In any Why Us, are you repeating any old info you found in a 5 minute search? Or the full profile you present matches them…because you are so truly interested that you dug deeper? The “you” that you show should be a match. That’s a whole lotta “demonstrateing.” Or not.
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1626043-ways-to-show-a-high-level-of-applicants-interest-p1.html is an older discussion on the subject. (Order of schools on FAFSA is no longer relevant, since the list of schools on FAFSA is no longer given to the schools.)
Colleges do not necessarily use all indicators of interest that are possible. But applicants may not know which indicators a college uses, so those who know the game may try to hit every indicator possible.
Posters repeat endlessly to register for blanket emails. They seem to forget that’s mighty easy. You could hate a college and have no intention of applying, but get the emails. Or assume it’s a safety and get blindsided by a reject. “But my scores were good and I founded the pie club…and signed up for their mailing list!” Think deeper.