Do college professors reach out before being admitted?

I wouldn’t doubt it. Most colleges, including elite ones like Wash U, have seen plummeting interest in the humanities. At Brown, for instance, the number of CS majors has more than quadrupled in the last decade as the number of art history majors has slumped to a mere 1/6 of a decade ago. Heck, 90% of the college search threads on CC lately have been prospective CS, engineering, business, and/or bio majors.