Believe it or not, colleges want to know you are interested in attending and many students simply stop with the college visit. This interest will influence their offers of admission. If they give you a coveted “accepted” slot, it only makes sense that those slots will go to the students who demonstrate interest. They are selling a service and they want interested customers, not casual shoppers. You can find out how much weight a college puts on “demonstrated interest” by researching the college’s statistics on College Navigator.
The college visit is a great place to start: taking the student-led tour and connecting with other students on campus. But if the college truly interests you, you should take that college visit a step further by considering these additional campus experiences.
Social media makes it easier than ever to connect with colleges and their representatives. You can follow them on Twitter, friend them on Facebook, connect with them on LinkedIn, and follow their Pinterest and Instagram accounts. Demonstrate genuine interest and contribute to the conversations; but don’t flood their accounts with replies and questions. In this case, less is more.
When application decision time rolls around you should have established yourself as an interested candidate. College admissions officers should be able to look at their records and see that you demonstrated interest. Some will remember your face, look back on your interview and be able to recall any conversations they had with you during the admissions process. You will trump anyone who hasn’t expressed interest and was simply a casual shopper.
Here’s how you can leverage specific social media accounts and use them to communicate with colleges:
When a college receives your application, admission officers look for ways to determine whether you will accept their offer of admission. Since all colleges have quotas to fill and determine their admission offers based on percentages of acceptance, showing interest lets them know you will likely accept their offer. As they see it, why offer admission to someone who isn’t interested when there is someone who is likely to accept?
How do you find the colleges that place a strong interest on this?
Which colleges want your student to show them some love? You don’t have to guess. You can use a tool like Collegedata.com to determine if a college uses demonstrated interest in its admission decision. The colleges are asked to rate 19 admission factors by using these four categories: very important, important, considered, and not considered. Each year, colleges are surveyed and this data is used to compile the information on its website.
To access the data, you simply search for the college, click on the Admissions tab, and scroll down to the Selection of Students heading. Then you can see the importance a college places on a student’s level of interest. Harvard, for example, lists this as “not considered.” In comparison, the United States Naval Academy, lists it as “very important.”
Social media makes it easier than ever to connect with colleges and admissions representatives because you don’t have to be on campus to make a connection.
