<p>On the website it says there are three kinds of tours: information sessions, campus tours and engineering tours. Does anyone with experience with these tours know which ones I should attend in order to show that I'm interested in applying to SEAS, i.e. which ones do they write your name down as a prospective applicant?</p>
<p>As far as I know, they don’t take roll or write down any names at these places. I went to an info session and a campus tour and didn’t get my name jotted down or anything. I didn’t take the engineering tour, but I suspect it’s the same.</p>
<p>The only way Columbia will know if you actually visited is when you check a box on the application. Most of the time, the application readers won’t even care about that; it’s probably for statistical purposes. I put a very brief mentioning of how I liked the small size of the campus when I visited on my “Why Columbia?” short answer, and that will attract more attention than anything else.</p>
<p>I filled out a card last summer when I visited.</p>
<p>I also checked the box on my application and mentioned my visit in a short response 
(I got in)</p>
<p>Demonstrated interest through campus tours, etc. won’t be much of a help for the top schools. If you want to show that you really think a school is a good fit for you (and you it), best way to show it is through your essays. One potential thing you might be able to do is go find, talk to, and impress an admissions counselor somehow (not something I did for Columbia, but I did it for three other top 15 schools that supposedly don’t provide admissions interviews and mentioned the counselor names in my essay; i did get into all three). The informal talk definitely won’t make or break your application. But if you do a good job at it (have some useful questions prepared and know about the school so if they ask questions, you can give a reply that will show that you are someone they would like to have on campus), it will be one more thing (albeit tiny) in your favor when they begin going through applications; of course, this depends on your social skills.</p>
<p>Demonstrated interest through campus tours alone could help for private safety schools who are looking to increase their yield %. ie. I have friends who got waitlisted at safety schools, which is most likely due to how they demonstrated no interest and the schools probably thought it was unlikely they would attend. Of course, being optimistic, you hopefully won’t need to consider a safety.</p>