<p>I talked to my college counseler and he said if you plan to ED somewhere you should get in contact with your regional admission officer so that you show interest in the school, as well as get to know your regional admission officer. I see no negatives really, except that it might be annoying if you ask TOO many questions. But, what kinds of questions do you all ask in order to try to be friendly and curious with your admissions officer? Overall, do most of you think this is even beneficial?</p>
<p>Meant to say <em>form a relationship with regional admission officer</em>.</p>
<p>depending on the school, the regional admission officer may be too busy or face too large of an applicant pool to want to hear from any one applicant, unless there is a problem that needs to be fixed. if this is for college fair or something like that where you’ll get to meet the adcom face to face, then it may be good to go introduce yourself and perhaps show some interest. otherwise, my experience is not to bother.</p>
<p>Make sure if the admissions rep visits your school, you go see him/her. Find out if the college has admissions people attending local or regional college fairs–and go introduce yourself. It was funny, for my daughter, the admissions reps at fairs were either very easy to talk with or a total turn-off to the school. Many of the young admissions people are graduates of the school, so you can ask about their experiences and what they liked the best–and the least. Express your interest and talk about things that indicate that you have really done your homework about the school and your interest is more than–it has the best reputation for what I want to do. Show in talking with the rep why the school is a good match for you.</p>
<p>Sweet, thanks everyone. So you wouldn’t advise finding the admission rep’s email for your region and starting a series of questions? All the schools that I’m applying to are smaller liberal art schools so I don’t think they will be TOO busy to answer some of my questions.</p>
<p>Just make sure that your answers are not available on the Web site.</p>
<p>^Yeah really that seems to be one of the biggest pet peeves they have.</p>
<p>Also it depends on the type of college. Overall, it’s a two way courtship between colleges and applicants. But the higher the selectivity level, the less the colleges care to court you as hard. For example. if you plan to apply ED to Columbia, your regional officer could care less to know you. He/She will have tons of GREAT applicants each and every year.</p>
<p>However, let’s say it’s a more obscure LAC. That person may be aggressively hunting down top applicants from your area. To get to know him/her would be useful and beneficial. It alerts him/her that “here’s a likely applicant”.</p>
<p>Basically, if your ED target school is very selective, your cozying up will be definitely seen as sucking up and worthless to your chances.</p>