<p>I would say visiting does matter.</p>
<p>Penn, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins all seemed to be keeping track of whether you visited or not.</p>
<p>“This is one of the reasons to include the state university of your own state as one of your safeties. They don’t get to play this game.”</p>
<p>While they might not play the game, some state Us are not automatic safeties even for applicants with great stats.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>However, is that necessarily beneficial to the university that is trying to “upgrade” its student body?</p>
<p>For example, if when looking at the margins of its acceptance range, suppose for the last four slots, it can accept twenty high stat applicants using it as a safety (each with a 20% chance of matriculating), or five low stat applicants applying as a reach (each with an 80% chance of matriculating) (let’s assume that neither the high stat nor low stat applicants are “special” in other ways relative to each other). In either case, the actual expected yield would be four students. But it would seem that accepting the twenty high stat applicants would produce four “better” matriculants than accepting the five low stat applicants.</p>
<p>This was four years ago , but the only school my daughter got rejected from , was the only one she never visited</p>
<p>Purely anecdotal but s was deferred from a school he flew half way across the country to see and went to a meet and greet at a hotel about an hour from here and got accepted into a school he never visited. </p>
<p>Lehigh for example takes interest very seriously. Some other schools don’t track and don’t seem to care.</p>
<p>No. They don’t care if you’ve visited or not.</p>
<p>MathMom, yes I made sure they were aware she visited the other school and she has written a great, personal email back to them mentioning things she liked, etc. I would think that visiting a school seven hours away showed interest, but apparently not enough.</p>
<p>I’m a little worried now that she hasn’t visited some of these other schools, but honestly, some have just come on to her radar recently and she does believe they are a good fit. She only narrowed down a major this past fall. I will have her write something personal or email/call someone to express her interest in a more personal way. She could squeeze in a few visits if I took her out a couple of days in January, but honestly, we thought we could do that once she found out if she was accepted, got aid, etc. Guess those days are gone.</p>
<p>I’m glad I got all your input. For what it’s worth, her older sister applied to nine schools and got into all of them, including several “safeties,” although she only visited a handful. Her stats were slightly lower than her sister’s, and she got into some decent schools with merit aid at most, although she didn’t apply to anything highly selective.</p>
<p>Funny you said Lehigh eyemamom because as I read through this thread that was the school that exactly came to mine. My son did not visit and I figured that if he applied they wouldn’t consider him since we live driving distance so I did not push him to. </p>
<p>I find the whole “interest” thing sometimes to be a bit much. Many kids, my son included, are interested in good academic matches first and would be satisfied with a variety of choices. He has no dream school nor is the type to fall in love with any school so why do schools insist on pulling this emotion which they like to call interest from kids.</p>
<p>I get that they don’t want to just be a safety consideration but sometimes you can’t make a visit and those touring ones don’t always fall on convenient days.</p>
<p>Vote No.
What’s a left-banker supposed to do looking at right-bank schools?</p>
<p>If the visitations are like the roadshows that the schools put on, Skip 'em.
If you want to know, seek out a family with a kid attending that school.</p>
<p>
And amusingly (also 4 years ago) my older son applied to 8 schools and got into 4, the 4 he *hadn’t *visited.</p>
<p>And some schools just flat out tell you they want you to visit and interview: This is from Carnegie Mellon.</p>
<p>Interest in Carnegie Mellon
By showing an interest in learning more about Carnegie Mellon, you can enhance your application. We strongly recommend that you have a campus visit before mid-November, which adds a personal touch to our evaluation. Admission interviews allow us the opportunity to get to know our applicants. Interviews are considered in the admission process and help the admission committee make better, more informed decisions with determining the freshman class.</p>
<p>Which just goes to show how random and unpredictable the college admissions process is. Sometimes it makes sense to analyze admissions decisions and try to determine the reason behind them - other times - it makes more sense to just accept the random nature of the process and move on.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus - you make a very interesting point about how the university could accept more of the higher stat kids - knowing their historical matriculation rate is lower - and still probably make the freshman class number they desire. But that is purely a mathematical analysis - leaving out the vagaries of dealing with teenagers. What if historical tends don’t hold true and too many of the high stat kids accept the offer of admission - now they have too big of a class - and the resulting housing shortages and so forth. Or - what if the numbers are fine - but they end up with many high stat kids who did not get into their top choices and are not happy about where they will be attending in the fall. Maybe they are going to try and transfer out asap. Would the university not be better off with more of the slightly lower stat kids who had our fictional university as one of their top choices and are excited to be attending?</p>
<p>The low stat students with the highest yield rate would also be the ones most likely to struggle academically; this would not necessarily be the best outcome either.</p>
<p>But not that some of the “demonstrations of interest” are rather costly in time and money (visits and the like). That might be difficult for a lower income family to afford. Perhaps that may be the intention or a welcome side effect at a school with budgetary problems that cannot afford to give much financial aid.</p>
<p>Very true! I’m sure those who work in college admissions grapple with these issues constantly. It does - at times - seem like a tremendous waste of resources - with students applying to “safety” schools that don’t really interest them and colleges behaving in ways that the average family defines as “recruiting” their student when all they really want to do is inflate their application numbers and hence their selectivity. A lot of game playing on both sides of the equation.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon, of course, was one of the schools my son hadn’t visited but did get into. :)</p>
<p>
I know this isn’t the case in the example you are responding to, but isn’t it true that some schools are NOT really “looking to upgrade their student body”? I know CC posters are used to thinking in terms of HYPSM’s but there is someplace out there for everyone (i.e. even the mere mortals) and not just community colleges vs everything else.</p>
<p>However, isn’t the usual reason for looking at “level of interest” to keep the yield rate high, which seems to be mostly rankings-motivated? If that is the case, then the school would also be motivated to “upgrade its student body”.</p>
<p>:lightbulb:
CMU doesn’t care if you visit. You’re not going to learn anything more than what you already know or can readily discover on the college’s website or other internet sources. They are not naive enough to believe that the prospect is only visiting just Pittsburgh. Case is nearby and so is Bucknell, and Cornell is near to Rochester. It’s a vacation if you start at Virginia Tech. And if you do early senior year visits, you might as well spend the airfare to see NU and MIT.</p>
<p>What they want to know is, If you will spend visitation Money; Then you are likely able to afford the COA. After all, what’s a few bucks when the total is 200K. Why spend valuable recruiting time and personnel on everyone with +2100 SAT; When you only have to recruit those 2100 SAT and have the MONEY. </p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>@longprime - I disagree. We needed a huge chunk of grant aid to be able to send my DS to Carnegie. They could have easily saved themselves a ton of money and bypassed my son for a full pay applicant. I think if you are within a reasonable driving distance and you do make the effort to attend the info sessions, get an interview or stay overnight - it can make a difference for a kid that may not be the absolute stellar student or needs some financial assistance. </p>
<p>I’m sure if a school wanted to fill all of their slots with full pay applicants with 2100+ stats, they could. However, I do think when they are shelling out a ton a grant aid -they might want to see that you made an effort to visit and interview or stay overnight.</p>
<p>So what does one do to show extra interest? For instance, my S visited Tufts and sent an application, but he doesn’t want to interview because it’s uncomfortable for him - too much pressure. He also went to the info session at his school by a visiting admissions officer. Is that enough? Should he do more? He also didn’t do the optional essay, which I told him was a mistake, and I’m trying to get him to send it in before the due date. </p>
<p>How much interest can you show? We visited and he applied. What else do they want? A song and dance? I’d be more than happy to give them one if I thought it would help!!</p>