Do people think that, for higher earners, a college might assume that if you haven’t visited, you’re just not that interested even when it’s nowhere near you? I know there are plenty of other ways of demonstrating interest, but I’m wondering if a visit holds a lot of more weight. There’s one school that is looking very appealing but there’s nothing else near it that we’d want to go to, so visiting it would be a lot of work for just one university.
I don’t know how a college would know whether or not you are a high earner.
Demonstrated interest varies from college to college. Some take it into consideration, some don’t. In my experience, it tends to matter more to smaller, private universities than it does to large public universities but YMMV. Many applicants don’t visit until they get accepted and have narrowed down the list of choices.
Editing to try and understand the income part: Are you wondering if colleges expect high earning families to make the visit because of their income levels? If so, then no - I don’t think income and willingness to visit are something they would track.
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Many students don’t visit colleges until after they receive acceptances. Then they choose their top three choices and visit.
If you are a higher income family, I’m wondering why you just wouldn’t visit this other college that is further away and not near the others?
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Many people do not visit.
Don’t overthink this. Set up a special email address just for college mail. Open every single email even if you don’t think you’re interested in a particular college. Log on to the Zoom info sessions for colleges you ARE interested in. If you have a question, ask it. When the Dean of students emails you asking if you want the login information for a faculty roundtable discussing “the future of higher education” or “what is the value of a liberal arts education” say yes- and then log in.
Voila. Demonstrated interest. Has nothing to do with income.
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I think an in-person visit is a convenient way to demonstrate interest. Assuming you have the time and it is affordable.
I do not think it is necessary, for anyone.
The actual point of all this is that typically colleges don’t want to give offers to applicants who are extremely unlikely to actually take those offers. Of course most selective colleges understand more of their non-binding admittees will end up choosing another college. But if their average yield rate is, say, around 15%, they may not want to bother with applicants whose estimated yield rate is more like 1.5%.
Demonstrated interest is therefore basically a way of getting you out of that 1.5% (or whatever) category, and into an acceptable range. And again, it may well be the case an in-person visit is sufficient for that purpose. But a collection of other things that has the same effect on their yield model would be fine too.
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As you pointed out, there are lots of ways to demonstrate interest, and colleges offer those opportunities because a visit before admissions decisions doesn’t make sense for everyone. It’s not just the expense of the trip – it’s also time, convenience, ease of travel, etc. For my D23, of her top 4-5 choices of schools that admitted her, she’d only visited one in person prior to applying (of that group, all but one would be categorized as highly selective). We narrowed that list to three and visited those before she made a final decision, but during the admissions cycle, she’d demonstrated interest in other ways: virtual info sessions and “tours,” requesting interviews when available, and so on. And of course the “why us?” application essay for those schools that ask for it can be another way to demonstrate interest.
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For us, that decision usually required us to take more time off work and miss more important school activities and athletic events than we were comfortable with. We showed interest through emailing AOs, interacting with social media, opening emails, and attending online events.
Also, don’t forget to continue to show interest after you are accepted. S23 was up for a full-ride scholarship to one of his top choices. While the chances of him getting the full scholarship were slim, he was guaranteed to get something if he interviewed. Interviews used to have an online option, but starting his admission cycle, they changed to only in-person. For us, flying in was a two-day ordeal and very expensive (remote location and only 1 early morning flight a day, requiring us to fly into a connecting city the night before). The trip would have been 5 days minimum with the travel time. I think they started requiring the in-person interviews to make sure they were giving the scholarships to people who had a VERY STRONG interest in attending.
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If you live within easy driving distance, it is great to visit if possible. Admissions officers do not expect applicants to come from afar to demonstrate interest. As noted above, there are many other ways to show interest.
If there is a school specific supplemental question, do the work needed to formulate a meaningful response. Look through the school website & course catalog, take part in online events, read informational emails, see if a representative will be in your area, sign up for an alumni interview if available, read the school paper online, etc. Be able to explain why/how the school is a good fit.
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OK, thanks everyone, I will no longer spend any time worrying about this!
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This.
I’ll add a few other suggestions. Use the same email to apply to colleges that you’ve used to sign up for information. Don’t browse in incognito mode; you want those cookies in your browser so they can see it’s you visiting repeatedly. And if they are looking for demonstrated interest online they can see if you’re clicking links, how much time you spend on a page, etc. So instead of trying to emulate an interested student and gaming the game, be an interested student and use the info they put on the web to see if it’s a good fit for you.
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And be sure to show remote images when looking at those emails (remote images are one way of tracking, which some people do not want on by default in their email program, but you want to be tracked by colleges that care about level of interest).
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In addition to the great suggestions above, I like to suggest trying to make sure not to miss any convenient opportunities to actually register for something. In-person visits are an example, but so are other examples like filling out a card at a college fair, signing up for a live online session, signing up to meet with a rep who visits your high school, optional non-evaluative interviews, and so on.
This is not exactly a deep thought, but a few times now I have seen it suggested that this sort of thing is a sufficiently unusual step for many kids today that it can actually act as a significant distinguishing factor.
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Of course, the strongest way to show interest is to apply ED, but that is only suitable if the school is a no regrets top choice that is affordable.
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