Demonstrated Interest

I have talked about demonstrated interest before, but it has been on my mind again recently as I am working with my students, but also as I was signing up for all of my tours in the New York City area. Princeton makes it very clear that they do not track demonstrated interest. As you will see in the picture below, they say that the admissions committee will not take into consideration if a student has visited campus or not when they are deciding to admit or deny a student. How do you know if a school tracks demonstrated interest? Remember a few weeks ago when I talked about those checkboxes on the common data set? You will see where I circled in the second picture below that Stetson University does consider demonstrated interest. If you go back to my post from a few weeks ago, you can see how it is obvious that the University of Florida does not track it.

If your child is interested in schools that do track demonstrated interest, here are the two easiest things they can do. Both of these things will help them when they write their supplemental essays. They should follow the school’s social media accounts on whatever platform they use. They can follow the main page as well as the page for admissions, the page for the major they are interested in, the page for any activities or sports they are interested in, etc. It is a bit embarrassing the number of accounts I follow for my daughter’s university. Obviously, this can get a bit overwhelming if students are doing this for a lot of schools. Students only need to do this for schools that track demonstrated interest. They certainly don’t need to go overboard on the number of accounts that they follow. It’s a great way to find out when decisions will be released as some schools don’t publish the exact day/time on their website. I tell my students that they don’t even need to read the posts; they should click like though. Actually learning about the school certainly makes a lot of sense, and these posts will help the students decide if it would be the right fit for them or not.

The other easy thing they should do is be sure they are on the email mailing list for each university they are interested in that tracks demonstrated interest. When the university sends emails, your student should open them and click on the links that interest them. Again, it is another great way to learn about the university and to show them that you are interested in attending.