Demonstrated Interest at Colleges Where it Really Counts

In our recent blog on Demonstrated Interest at the Ivies, we explained what this term means at the most selective schools and promised you a follow up on how demonstrated interest is tracked elsewhere. Demonstrating interest is a key factor in your application strategy and we want to help you maximize your chances at institutions where these metrics are used.

DEMONSTRATED INTEREST DEEP DIVE

WHAT is demonstrated interest?

“Demonstrated interest” has come to refer to the increasingly automated ways in which prospective students interact with colleges through “touchpoints” such as campus visits, emails, and virtual information sessions.

WHY do some colleges track demonstrated interest?

Colleges can track students at every stage of the application and enrollment process. There are two fundamental reasons why some colleges track students this carefully:

1. To measure the impact of their recruiting materials and efforts so that they can allocate resources most effectively (i.e., evaluating their own marketing efforts).
2. To monitor an applicant’s engagement to estimate the likelihood that they will enroll if admitted (i.e., tracking demonstrated interest with the goal of optimizing yield).

HOW do colleges track demonstrated interest?

Despite the lofty premises of academia, colleges are also businesses and most have deployed CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools. Technolution’s Slate platform is by far the most popular, as it is the only one dedicated specifically to higher education. Over 1,400 colleges and universities now use Slate to manage and track their relationships with applicants.

Students are added to college-specific CRM databases like Slate when they fill out the information form at a college fair, campus visit, virtual information session, mailing list, or college website. Most students first enter these CRM databases through the institutional purchase of names from the College Board. When taking the SATs or AP exams, students are given the choice of opting in to make their information available to schools and scholarship entities. The College Board then sells student information to colleges for an estimated $80 million annually (more than their profit from administering the actual tests!).

Within these college CRM systems, students are typically tracked by their email address and birthdate, so it is important to maintain a dedicated and consistent email address throughout your college search.

TTA Hot Tip: If your school issues an email address for this purpose, ensure that you will have continued access to it after graduation, as waitlist movement can occur as late as July.

If you apply under a different email address than the one where you had received college emails, those records will not match and you will be considered a “stealth applicant,” one who has no relationship with the college until the moment you apply. For colleges that track demonstrated interest, you do NOT want to be a stealth applicant because your goal is to show that you have done your research and are highly interested in that particular school.

TTA Hot Tip: Although social media is a great way to learn about a school, engagement on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other sites is much less important than other modes of demonstrated interest as few schools have the ability to match social media handles with their applicant profiles.

WHAT forms of demonstrated interest do colleges track?

The best way to indicate your sincere interest in a college is to apply during the binding Early Decision round. After this, the most significant ways of signaling interest are through a campus visit and through your supplemental essays, which should show how you would contribute to a school’s community.

In our recent blog, “Demonstrated Interest at the Ivies,” we noted that all colleges care about this level of genuine interest. You could also consider connecting with a school’s debate team, orchestra, current students, your regional admissions representative (if specified), or a professor whose research project aligns closely with your academic interests. These connections would likely feature in your supplemental college-specific essay.

YIELD IS KING

Although the Ivies and other extremely selective schools do not need to track and quantify mechanical “demonstrated interest” since their yields are already so high, demonstrated interest becomes increasingly important at less selective schools, where estimating and maximizing yield is critical for the school’s enrollment strategy. At one end of the extreme, counselors noted this year that several students had applications automatically withdrawn from Clark Atlanta after those students clicked the “unsubscribe” link on institutional emails. Similarly, students who clicked “unsubscribe” on Case Western’s emails were asked if they intended to withdraw their applications.

TRACKING TOUCHPOINTS

Within the Slate dashboard visible to admissions offices, a colored timeline shows each engagement opportunity and whether or not the student has participated. You can get a rough sense of what this looks like on the college side from Slate’s website. A quick glimpse easily indicates how much interest a student has shown. From initial inquiry, marketing, and recruitment, through the application evaluation process, to decision notification, yield, matriculation, and beyond, each interaction between the student and a college can be monitored.

The following are common “touchpoints” that Slate and similar systems track:

• Whether you initiated contact with the university yourself or whether they purchased your name.
• Whether you visited the college in person.
• Whether you signed up for a college’s virtual tour, information session, or student panel.
• Whether you attended the college’s virtual tour, information session, or student panel you signed up for.
  • TTA Hot Tip: YouTube only counts views if a video has been played for at least 30 seconds.
• Whether you attended a College Fair in your area where the college was in attendance.
• Whether you attended a visit by a college representative to your high school.
• Whether you opted for an interview (if offered).
• Whether you opened an email sent by the college.
• Whether you clicked on a link embedded within an email sent by the college.
• Whether you watched a video embedded within an email sent by the college.
• What type of device you used for opening their emails (computer, phone, tablet, or other).
• How many times you opened an email.
• What date and time of day you opened an email.
• Whether you responded to an invitation sent in a direct mail piece to request additional information.
• Whether you responded to a text sent by the college.
• Whether you initiated a conversation and participated in a college’s text event.

DEMONSTRATED INTEREST = ONE PIECE OF THE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS PUZZLE

Some of these interactions are meant to guide colleges in their marketing efforts (for example, should they optimize the format of their emails for computer screen or phone?). However, as application numbers continue to skyrocket at many schools, yield – and therefore tracking demonstrated interest – becomes an increasingly important part of the selection process.