<p>If you can find a particular school’s common data set (CDS) online, you can see what the school itself says about the importance of demonstrated interest. In the “First-Time First-Year Admission” section (C), under “relative importance of academic/nonacademic factors,” the last category is “level of applicant’s interest.”</p>
<p>Of the schools my kids looked at, interest seemed important at Muhlenberg, Emory, and George Washington. We were told it was not considered at UNC-CH and W & M.</p>
<p>Emory has been mentioned and I can confirm that they definitely track interest via visits, emails, and other contacts. If you are interested in Emory at all, NOT demonstrating interest can easily get you denied.</p>
<p>My daughter applied to both WashU & Emory. We also visited both schools which was not easy as we live in the northeast. Also, with WashU my daughter attended an info session in NYC. She then interviewed at WashU when we there. So what happened? She was waitlisted at WashU and accepted at Emory. It’s a total crapshoot these days. So I agree with other posters who say WashU may say they care about interest but they don’t really. As for my daughter, she’s going to Princeton. The absolute last school we visited.</p>
<p>@ronib321:
I think you prove my point exactly.
WashU. probably looked at your daughter’s app and thought (rightly) that she was going to be admitted to several higher-ranked schools and would be unlikely to enroll at WashU., hence the wait list.</p>
<p>In this case the amount of interest did not matter, it was the likelihood of enrolling that made the difference.</p>
<p>Strangely as it seems, the fact that my son was not Princeton material helped him, while it hurt your daughter. (although not so much, as she’s still going to Princeton 
).</p>
<p>Emory, Pomona</p>
<p>Add Boston College to the list of schools that DO NOT CARE about “the love”. :)</p>
<p>What about Ivies? Specifically, Cornell.</p>
<p>Soze, actually my daughter was not a lock for the Ivies. We thought her best chance for an Ivy was Brown where’s she a legacy. They waitlisted her. She felt if she didn’t get into Brown that WashU would be where she would go. The Princeton acceptance just stunned us because it’s actually harder to get in there than Brown. It worked out well since Princeton is only 90 minutes away and not two flights away like St. Louis.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt; evident by the number of qualified (as people who got into Ivies) candidates that are waitlisted. Or it could just the the Tufts Syndrome…</p>
<p>Brown was <em>impossible</em> this year.
(I know at least one 4.0/2400 who was not even waitlisted).
At my son’s very high-end private school not a single unhooked applicant got into Brown this year.</p>
<p>Anyway back to the topic at hand. Your daughter’s case proves how totally messed-up this process is. Nobody should be rejected by WUSTL who got into Princeton. I would love to have the opportunity to shove your daughter’s file in front of the WashU admissions director and have them point out specifically what was “lacking” in her application that somehow Princeton was able to overlook.</p>
<p>This sort of randomness on the part of the schools is why everybody has to apply to at least a dozen schools nowadays when back in the day you really didn’t need to apply to more than three or four.</p>
<p>College of the Holy Cross cares about demonstrated interest</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s that uncommon that this happens.</p>
<p>Actually worse than the WashU waitlist, was the rejection by Wesleyan. Then she got a nice scholarship from Oberlin which is very similar to Wesleyan. We visited Wesleyan twice and never set foot on Oberlin’s campus. It’s a total crapshoot. My daughter feels students should apply to at least 8 schools because you just don’t know where you’ll get accepted. And yes, Brown was impossible this year but we sat and listened to the Brown admissions director say at an alumni meeting that if you were a girl interested in the hard sciences you were golden in their eyes. Well that was my daughter, also a Brown legacy, but she was waitlisted. This actually was fine because my husband said he would choose Princeton over Brown. So there’s a happy ending.</p>
<p>@ronib321:
It looks like our kids almost applied to the same bunch of schools.
S also turned down a nice scholarship from Oberlin (he’s going to Wesleyan, he got in off the waitlist).</p>
<p>Why do you think this his happening now, but never happened in our day? There was almost always a consistency between the schools. (e.g. if you could get into Princeton, you could get in anywhere, etc.) The randomness is crazy. My S has a classmate that’s going to Penn that got rejected by George Washington!</p>
<p>Soze, where was your son going to attend prior to getting off Wesleyan’s waitlist? The classmate that was rejected by GW but going to Penn is crazy too. Although Penn might be less expensive than GW which I believe has one of the highest tuition in the country. For the record, my daughter applied to Princeton, Yale, Brown, Wesleyan, WashU, Emory, Oberlin, Rice, Pitt & Muhlenberg. Pitt was the safety as was Muhlenberg. My daughter originally wanted to apply to Berkeley but with all the budgetary problems in California we convinced her to apply to Rice and Oberlin. As to why this is happening these days, I would say a good part of it is the common application. You read on CC kids applying to all the ivies and top tier schools. Plus, I think the US News rankings probably plays into it as well. Prior to the computer (in our olden days), there’s no way you would apply to 10 schools.</p>
<p>Wesleyan was brutal this year. One more added factor that did not exist “back in the day” is the relative affordability of trans-continental air travel. Whereas, thirty years ago three-quarters of the student populations at Wesleyan, Amherst, and Swarthmore might have been from the Northeast Corridor between the District of Columbia and Maine, the figure today is closer 50-60%, giving rise to the slightly oxymoronic term (to these geriatric ears, anyway), “national liberal arts college”. It’s great for the schools themselves, but, murder, if you happen to live in Manhattan, Boston or Fairfield County (CT).</p>
<p>@ronib321:
Son was all set to go to WUSTL (even paid the deposit, he is now the owner of a $450 WashU. tee-shirt). The admit from Wes arrived two weeks later. He actually applied ED to Wes and was waitlisted (not even deferred to the RD round). He was pretty PO’d and disappointed, but it’s all worked out.</p>
<p>My son’s safeties were UConn and NYU. Besides WashU. and Wes he also got into Oberlin and Rochester (both with $$). </p>
<p>@johnwesley:
Not so sure about the air travel thing. I went to Brandeis thirty years ago and we had a large west coast and midwest contingent.</p>
<p>I don’t think any of the Ivies care about demonstrated interest.</p>
<p>As for how unpredictable admissions has become - I think it’s a combination of factors. The first is that many more kids are going to college period. The second is that the top kids are more likely to go out of their regions. There were always some kids who went away - I had a roommate from the midwest and one from California (and one from Paris) when I was at Harvard, but I also knew a young woman who was the first person at her school to ever go out of state to college. I also think that when colleges decided to use the prep schools less as feeder schools that made a difference. The prep schools often pretty much divided up the class into the schools they thought they should feed into and then arranged for the acceptances to come out that way.</p>
<p>I was going to post that Oberlin cared. They gave the most lukewarm acceptance to D compared to the other more highly ranked LACs. I guess she just didn’t fit their profile.</p>
<p>Johnwesley, Thanks for the info on Wesleyan admissions this year. We could not figure out our daughter’s rejection. She really liked the school. As for air travel, since 9/11 I think it has become more difficult to fly. I was relieved my daughter wasn’t going to WashU or Emory which would have involved flying home. But I do agree that students these days often go to colleges outside their own region. A friend of mine’s daughter graduated from Wesleyan and she had a lot of friends who were from California and were attending Wesleyan. Mathmom, you’re right about the ivies not caring who shows interest. When we took tours at Yale & Brown, they did not take anyone’s name. I think their attitude is we’re getting 25,000 applicants anyway so who needs names.</p>