<p>Very few large universities with competitive admissions care about “demonstrated interest”. A few less competitive LACs do. The best known a few years ago was F&M. </p>
<p>Consider the case of UofC and its peers. They get thousands of applications. How are they going to track and evaluate this “interest”? It is hard to automate - you can’t just count emails (suppose you could but that would be pretty naive!). Then, think of the queries that pre-date applications, such as campus visits. Do you count those too? Add in a few more thousand. </p>
<p>As Idad suggested, the essays will tell the adcom far more about the student than emails, visits and phone calls. </p>
<p>This is one reason why some places have essays.</p>