<p>Do college visits have any weight on admission decisions? For example, if two equally qualified students apply and one has registered for and taken a school offered tour of the campus at some time and the other has not, does the applicant who took the tour have an advantage of gaining admittance over the applicant who has not?</p>
<p>Probably. The school wants to admit someone that is more likely to come. The person who visited and decided to apply (or applied and spent the money to visit) demonstrates interest and a likeliness to attend. The other student is a question mark, who may have just applied because his parents forced him to. All other things equal, as you said, the one who visited will be admitted. But it becomes considerably more complicated even when you throw in a few differences in applications.</p>
<p>It depends on the school. </p>
<p>Some, such as WUSTL and Emory are concerned with students showing interest and may attribute some part of admissions to visits, etc. However, other schools, particularly those with high yields, don’t keep track of visits and don’t use interest as a factor in admissions.</p>
<p>I think that a college visit and on campus interview may very well work in your favor, but I agree that it varies from school to school. Certain schools like U of chicago do care about interest. My child had marginal grades and SAT’s for admittance there. We traveled to the campus where she had a fabulous interview and got a lot of support from her interviewer throughout the admissions process and was ultimately accepted. I think that that trip made all of the difference. While a college visit can be quite expensive, perhaps it should be done for at least the student’s perceived first choice school.</p>
<p>OP: if you do a search of “demonstrated interest” you’ll understand how a visit may or may not help. If target schools are tippy-top tier, no weight whatsoever is given to visits or the student’s level of “interest”</p>
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<p>The OP asked only about the impact of attending a campus tour on admissions decisions. There is a big difference between participating in a tour and having an interview.</p>