I’m sure there’s some self-selection bias going on. You need a good amount of motivation and drive to get yourself out to a school that you love just to see it for yourself—without ANY guarantees of getting in.
Someone who does a school visit just to “demonstrate” anything… I dunno, it doesn’t seem likely they’ll be able to tip the scales all that much. Maybe I’m wrong.
Obviously if you have two or three colleges and you can afford to make the visits, by all means do it.
I’m no admit pro, but I’d caution about worrying about fiddling in the margins, as well as putting the cart before the horse.
The process, it seems to me, is pretty straightforward:
There are tons of schools out there.
A student, if they are doing due diligence, should show demonstrated interest in the school - how else do they learn about fit?
As a practical matter, a student should be advised to leave a “trail” whenever they do something that demonstrates interest if they can. There are lots of ways to do this -
If they go to the website, drop admissions an email with a legit question or sign up for some event. Usually you can sign up for communication.
If they visit FB or other social media, hit the “like” button on something. Probably does little, but can’t hurt.
If they go to campus but don’t have time for an official tour, stop by admission and say a quick “hello” and follow up with an email.
If the school does alumni interviews, make sure to get one (btw, this is a place many schools gauge genuine interest, esp. in their further-flung admit areas.)
If the school participates in a local college fair, try to drop by, go by the table and say “hi” to regional adcom. Follow up with an short email.
There are so many easy ways now, no reason not to use them.
Then, just as, if not much more importantly, the student should be very mindful of indicating interest in the appliction. This seems obvious, but I’ve spoken to more than one adcom who has seen applications that make it clear the school is not top choice for the student either subtly or nearly explicitely (and, as an alumni interviewer, I’ve had kids tell me unprompted, the school I’m interviewing for is not first choice, even though I never ask.) I think it helps to explain the application “yield game” to a kid so they don’t think they are being dishonest. Many kids get hung up on the “1st choice” issue. I tell kids I talk to: Even if XX is not, technically, your first choice, would you be thrilled to be accepted and attend (cause you may not get into your 1st choice.) If the answer is “yes” then I encourage them to make sure that excitement - and the reasons for it - get into the application.
Like @TiggerDad saw with his kid, it is very possible to express strong demonstrated interest (or inadvertently expess strong lack of demonstrated interest) through your essay/application. (The admissions talk at Columbia a few years ago mentioned a student who had included in his Columbia application that he had “always dreamed of going to school in New Haven…”)
I would doubt schools want kids and parents to spend lots of money crisscrossing the country just to show “interest” but schools are pretty saavy at distilling genuine interest/likelyhood of attending from the application process. They have seen it all by now.
And, parents and kids should understand, schools are in a statistical catch-22, in a way, if they play the “accepted student stats” game while trying to yield protect. Lehigh or Villanova might see an 800/800/4 UW applicant, know that they are likely to attend a more competitive school, but if they accept them, their “admitted students” stats number rises. If they reject, to yield protect, they lose that stat bump. So sure, Villanova could engineer a 99% yield by accepting only students for whom 'Nova is a strong reach, but then their admitted student stats drop.
So the clever adcoms try to divine “likely to attend” from the 25-75 students and that is where students should be most concerned about demonstrated interest: in the schools that are a “slight reach” or “reach.”
But I don’t think many schools would want you to drop money you don’t have and take time your kid can’t afford, just to travel cross country and say “hi” in the hopes it tilts an application. There are many more cost-effective ways to do the same thing.
And those visit/admit stats should have ED/REA applications teased out. I’d bet there’s lots of overlap and ED is the hands-down best way (of course) to demonstrate interest and for schools to yield protect.
Don’t tell Columbia you love the peaceful surroundings and Dart that you love the city vibe. Lol, real example. You don’t need a visit to know.
You can’t nail whether a kid will attend. That bright kid may want to stay in his region (UCB, UCLA, Stanford, UM, UT, Duke, etc, versus a NE college.) Or the real New England goal is MIT, but hey, they were around, so they saw H and some LACs on the same trip. It’s much more than a visit: it’s fit and how they seem to have matched themselves.
Coincidentally, the only schools that my D1 was not admitted is the one she did not visit. Nevertheless, it has the lowest admission rate anyway. For D2, she only visited the primary target school which is basically the flagship in town. The next closest school on her list is 4+ hours away. To express interest in these schools, she submitted test scores early to some of them, visited their booths at the college fair (and filled up the information request form) in her school. In addition, she requested information on their websites. For schools that offer alumni review in town, registering for that would be a good way to demonstrate interest. Visiting campus is just one of the way to demonstrate interest, while do not visit a campus within driving distance may be interpreted as the lack of interest.
Regarding the Princeton CDS saying it considers demonstrated interest - there is a set of private schools (both boarding and day) that typically send a good number of kids to HYP every year. For students from those schools, applying SCEA is looked at as very close to binding if the students are admitted, because the secondary school won’t let the admitted kids apply to other Ivies. My D was invited to the Creative Arts & Humanities Symposium run by the Admission Office in the fall of 2015 (her senior year) and wrote the dean on her return that she would enroll if admitted (applied SCEA and accepted her offer right after Xmas break).
The same calculus is also playing out with recruited athletes.
Net, Princeton could be correct in both its CDS submission and with what it says on its website. It does not track visits for purposes of admission but it does consider “special” points of contact (demonstrations of serious interest) like the relationships between coach/recruited athlete and the wining/dining for humanities kids at the Symposium.
Another plausible reason why many highly-selective universities declare in the CDS that demonstrated interest is not a factor in admissions:
If kids think that they have a shot regardless of demonstrated interest, then they will be more likely to submit an application. Conversely, stating that demonstrated interest is an important factor in admissions tends to suppress the number of applications – the exact opposite outcome desired by universities aiming to climb in rankings, or stay at the top.
Obviously, the more applications, the lower the admit rate, the higher the USNWR ranking. Stating that demonstrated interest is not considered in admission decisions may be just another way for universities to game the system.
Oh, come on. Don’t apply if you aren’t “interested enough” to research the college and learn why you are a match for them (not just why you want them.) Then, to wisely show it on the app and any supp. Who’s gaming whom? Top schools want kids who can think. Not, “Ok, I visited, that shows I’m a super duper candidate and promises I’ll yield.”
There is no fairy dust protecting a kid just for visiting.
I agree completely. Don’t apply if you aren’t interested enough to explore department websites, meet with university representatives at local college fairs, or visit the campus (family budget permitting). And, of course, demonstrating your interest still doesn’t guarantee anything. There are no guarantees.
But also don’t apply, thinking that you have a shot, because the university declares that demonstrated interest doesn’t matter. Don’t feed the ratings beast.
Btw, it’s not just me questioning the motives of universities that say that demonstrated interest is not a factor in admissions:
“Many colleges will say that visiting campus doesn’t factor into the equation when an admissions officer is weighing your admission. And why should college say otherwise? It is in the interest of every college in America — even Harvard — to encourage as many students to apply as possible (even unqualified applicants). The more students who choose to apply, invariably the lower the school’s admission rate will be and the higher the school will be ranked in the all-important US News & World Report college ranking. Suggesting that visiting matters doesn’t serve the college because it only discourages students who haven’t visited from applying since they think their odds will be diminished.”
GnocchiB made a very good point. There is a set of private schools where college admissions officers are almost guaranteed that certain admitted students will enroll. The best way to demonstrate interest is to attend one of those schools and have your private school’s admissions counselor vouch for you.
Compare that to a typical huge magnet public high school where outstanding students – often with less guidance whose parents (if they were even born in the US) did not attend Ivies – may be applying to Yale, Princeton, Penn and Columbia (if not more) and experience has proven that those students are just as likely to turn down an acceptance as to enroll. They have one school guidance counselor for 100 students and the counselor has no idea what the preferences of each student are, nor would they be very reliable if they did.
College Admissions officers are judged on the yield of the class they admit. They need to have some well-qualified “guarantees”. So when it comes to deciding between a well-qualified student from a private school where they know a student is 99.99% likely to attend, or a well-qualified student from a public school who will probably have a number of good choices and the likelihood of enrollment is 50/50, does one get a boost because of “demonstrated interest”?
The strongest way to show a high level of interest is to apply ED if the college offers it.
Imagine applying ED and not being able to show you know the school beyond “you have my major.”
Thousands in competition but your trump card is you visited? Nope.
Believe it or not, the adoption of CA has led to many more applications and some of them are partly because of the little additional effort. Unlike the old days that you go through the school information package before filing the application, now some students just look up the list and add to the application. For instance, the applicant pool at UMich doubled after joining CA. I doubt there are suddenly many more students interested in UMich.