Question about demonstrated interest- how much do you think is reasonable for LACs? We’ve checked the CDS to see how it’s weighted, but for those that list it as ‘considered’ how much should we plan on doing beyond a tour or virtual session? My kid has schools that we’ve visited in person, but wondering if she should attend a student panel or virtual sessions in addition to touring? Obviously it depends on the school, but we’re trying to balance demonstrating enough vs. not overloading her on unnecessary virtual sessions. What are your kids doing?
This is a great questions and I look forward to others’ thoughts. I have seen college admission counselors recommend emails to the admissions rep as a follow up to open houses/visits so D26 is sending one to Quinnipiac. They also have virtual interviews as an option on their website but no dates are available right now.
My D24 applied to 3 LACs where demonstrated interest was listed as ‘considered’ on the CDS. For 1 of those, we couldn’t go visit in person until AFTER the admission decision occurred.
What I had D24 do was:
- if there an online virtual info session available at a time slot that worked for her schedule, she signed up for it and attended.
- during the virtual info sessions, Q&A sessions, etc., she would ask a question IN the online session.
- sent follow up emails to the admissions officers/reps at each LAC to ask 1 or 2 specific questions about the school, program, etc.
This last bullet was something that D24 really really resisted doing at first. I had to suggest a couple of things she could ask about in order to get things going. For example:
- ask something specific about the major the kid is applying for.
- if your kid wants to get a part time job on campus, ask if the on-campus jobs are reserved for students on federal work study grants.
- D24 was interested in pre-health advising, so she asked a more detailed question about that.
- she also asked about how OOS students get to/from the airport on breaks.
also, if the LAC sends your kid automated emails with links in them, have your kid click on the links and spend a few min browsing the school’s website from there. Some colleges collect data from that as an extra way to track demonstrated interest.
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also, when emailing the admissions department, your student should be the one sending the email, not the parent.
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Really good question and I look forward to seeing what others are doing. For D26, for some we’ve been able to visit campus and for those, I’m not so worried about demonstrated interest as we flew to some other place to visit them. If that doesn’t tell them she is interested, well then I don’t know what to say. That said, for some of those, she has joined virtual events she was interested in as well, but not all. Less because of interest level in the school, but more due to lack of interest in the virtual event.
For schools we didn’t visit it had primarily been virtual events and some of those schools have also visited her high school. She has gone to/is going to all of those unless there is a class conflict she can’t avoid. In that case, she emails the rep to let them know she wanted to attend but had a conflict, and says something about the virtual visit she attended and something that interests her in the school.
She will also do interviews at all of them that have them as optional or recommended, to also show interest.
We are not making her ask questions at info sessions or artificially email reps to show interest as that is not in her nature to always ask questions just to ask and we are fine with that. She will have questions prepared for all of her interviews which feels more natural to her and makes sense. This is not to say that she hasn’t asked questions at any of the visits/but only when she genuinely has one and doesn’t feel like she is forcing something just to ask something.
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I feel you! My D26 has to do the STARS (formerly SRAR) for Pitt, and it was giving her trouble to create an account – and then when she finally got it, she was able to import classes from her school’s system, but it did something weird and listed one-semester classes as a full year, plus a couple other quirks. So she made an appt with her advisor for lunch Wed to figure that out, but I’m feeling the time pressure, too, because Pitt is rolling.
She also has to submit a 2-min video for one particular selective major, and yeah, that was only available in the portal. She has until Nov 1. She’s giving a 4-min presentation in class this Thurs on a relevant topic, so she’s going to ask someone to record her and submit a portion of that, I think.
And then, she never got the proper NetID or whatever to create a portal for one school and had to email them to follow up, but she hasn’t heard back.
So yes, just a lot of niggling little things!
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She should be able to just go in and edit them.
She can, but there was some other weirdness with the import, so she wanted to double check with the advisor before linking it to the school.
What kind of clubs do you mean?
I know at Rice, there is a bit of jockeying to get into the important consulting/business/finance/CS clubs. The reason for that is because the clubs often get free tickets and travel to various conferences, and it’s at those conferences that students are offered internships and jobs on the spot.
I don’t think there’s any kind of cap on, say, rocketry club and things like that – although maybe not every student gets to be on the team that takes whatever project to competition.
Rice has a squirrel-watching club (lots of fat squirrels on campus, which is common), and then there is a club that watches the squirrel-watchers. 
I think anyone can join that one, LOL!
I’m surprised that Emory Oxford would be so intense with its clubs – I mean, it’s only freshmen and sophomores on campus, so who are they keeping out?
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We found students were very forth coming about the competitiveness of clubs on their campuses. If your D knows what kind of clubs she would want to join, she can ask directly.
FWIW, we found a huge disparity in club competitiveness even amongst academic peers.
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This happened to D26 as well. She just went in and manually changed it. She did it year by year to make sure everything was correct before submitting it.
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I don’t know what I don’t know, so I have no idea the scope of clubs that might be exclusionary on some campuses. I’ve really just learned it is an issue for folks experience on here recently so trying to sus it out. My kid is not pre-professional at all at this point, but one of her goals for college is to start figuring out a path to career. So, places with clubs that shut out those without experience could be a problem on the professional development side. But, I’m more worried in general about a vibe of exclusivity and competition around opportunities to participate and explore things you are interested in. I’m not worried about a sitch where just the investment banking and consulting hopeful clubs are exclusionary, but a broader culture of such would be.
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I have heard UCLA is very competitive with regards to clubs and internship opportunities. You have to advocate for yourself while UC Davis is the opposite with plenty of internships opportunities available even to freshmen.
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I would disagree with regarding UC Davis and internship opportunities. UCD is also like any other big public university. They all have a career center, career fairs and similar things on campus, but the students have to proactively look for them.
When my S23 was visiting colleges, it seemed to him that the most highly competitive culture he encountered was at UW (Seattle), where the engineering teams and clubs proudly told him how rejective they were (like, “we only admitted 12% last year!”), and everything else in the university also seemed to require a competitive application process with essays & recommendations & interview, etc.
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There are clubs on every campus, especially at selective colleges, which are very hard to get into. Kids joke that their acceptance rate is much lower than the colleges acceptance rate. That being said, in my opinion, applying to the clubs has become same as applying to colleges, everyone wants to get into the top 20 only! There are hundreds on clubs at some of these campuses catering to literally every interest, but most of the kids want to get into those select few only.
Same for S26 over here too, those exact dates! It’s sloooooow here too!
Hopefully the Pokémon clubs won’t be competitive
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If there are a few exclusive clubs, that doesn’t concern me. But, I am hoping that at least some of the campuses she is looking at are places where the culture is not driven by the hope to get in those exclusive clubs with other activities viewed as second rate by most. I feel like particularly at small liberal arts colleges like she is interested in, such exclusivity focus could have a major negative impact on the experience and vibe. Again, I don’t know how big an this actually is for us as we didn’t hear anything of the sort on any of our visits, but I know it would be a big turnoff to D26 even if she could get into such clubs. She’s more of the “inclusive is better” type than one to feel good about herself for being in some group that excludes peers from participating unnecessarily. If folks were bragging about only letting 12% in or the like as another poster mentioned, she would want nothing to do with that crowd.
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My D22 is a senior at UCLA and did experience being rejected by a handful of clubs before she found her place. I remember a very tearful phone call fall quarter sophomore year after a couple of these rejections.
As much as that experience sucked for her, I did notice that she started paying attention to how a good friend of hers managed to land in every club. She picked up some great skills for interviews, connecting with others, expressing herself more clearly from watching her friend and others. And she got into some great clubs the following quarter. She’s better for having had that “failure” of sorts and now she knows she can go after things she wants and put her best foot forward.
Competition isn’t always a bad thing 
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