Courtesy of Lewis & Clark
Be honest: When you were applying to colleges, did you read every email in your inbox? If you were anything like myself and most high schoolers, the answer is no. And who could blame you? I certainly had trouble keeping up. With the relentlessness of colleges hungry for new students, ending up on multiple admission mailing lists can be overwhelming. What is important to read? Which links are worth clicking? Does it matter what I look at? Turns out, it does. Those split-second decisions of opening an email or clicking a link and reading through it might have been a factor in why you were accepted, because what you did — or did not do — is demonstrated interest.
Demonstrated interest is one of the lesser-known factors in a college application. The admissions office sees whether potential students have visited campus, interacted with professors, applied by deadlines, read emails, followed links and how much time they spent on those pages. This may seem inconsequential to the average already-enrolled college student, but it is not. In reality, how our administration handles the admissions process directly impacts our finances and our future peers.
Some colleges have abstained from observing demonstrated interest, and concerns have been raised among critics on the ethics of the practice. After all, technology tracking IP addresses feels invasive, and the concept of being monitored may cause unintended stress. Should we be worried?
After looking into how LC uses demonstrated interest, I do not think students need to be worried about the practice at Lewis & Clark. Joe Johnson, senior associate dean of admissions, director of admissions communications and member of the admissions committee, gave me a holistic view of how demonstrated interest impacts incoming and current students. Our admissions office observes information such as whether students have emailed, toured campus, whether officially or on their own, reached out to professors, what links they used and the emails they read.
“Students who’ve had some kind of contact with us. That’s something that we like to see and hope to see in an application,” Johnson said in an interview with The Mossy Log. “I view that information and use it as part of our overall evaluation of an admissions application.”
LC utilizes Technolutions Slate to track this data.
“Slate does track things from IP addresses and uses what it calls ping data of — on our website — places that students have visited so that we can use that information to say, oh, this student is clearly interested in housing because they’re visiting the housing website. Let’s send them more information about housing,” Johnson said.
Johnson emphasized that LC tracks reported data rather than utilizing artificial intelligence. Slate’s tracking also allows the admissions office to identify areas of interest among prospective students and tailor information accordingly.
“There’s a lot of international laws about data privacy. So that’s why a lot of websites have been adding and introducing more little pop-ups that say, here’s some, you know, ways that we use your information, accept, manage your cookies, reject all, there’s stuff like that,” Johnson said.
This underlines how mundane the usage of this technology is today.
For prospective students, the more important distinction may be that demonstrated interest is considered as one part of an application rather than a requirement for admission. Johnson said LC does not require prospective students to engage with the college in a particular way.
Demonstrated interest is just another statistic that helps the college measure how likely you are to actually enroll. It is tracked in the same way your phone notes any information on what you visit and for how long.
Demonstrated interest is a major way potential students can get involved and demonstrate to colleges such as LC that they are seriously considering enrolling. But it is not the only part of an application.
“The easy way to put it is demonstrating interest or not demonstrating interest is never going to make or break a decision for us. It’s never going to be a decision that hinges on whether you have engaged with us. However, we do take it into consideration,” Johnson said.
In some recent years, demonstrated interest was effectively a requirement. To avoid putting students who could not afford to travel or did not know how to get involved at a disadvantage, LC took precautions, such as covering flight expenses for some applicants.
“So we actually gave them an opportunity before we said yes or no to them,” Johnson said. “We said, hey, we see that you haven’t engaged with us. Here’s a form; fill out this form, let us know what things you are interested in. If you fill out the form, we will admit you.”
Johnson shared that the email went to several hundred students in each of the two years the approach was used. Between a quarter and a third of them never filled out the form, even though the college had said it would admit those who did.
“So it was a kind of interesting data point for us to show that demonstrated interest is, in some ways, a reliable measure for us to track whether the student is actually serious about Lewis & Clark, and whether if we admit them, they might actually come,” Johnson explained. “Because if we just admit a few hundred students who really don’t want to come here, that’s a waste of our resources, our time. We’re mailing things out; we’re sending and printing brochures. We could save and reallocate those funds to make sure that we’re only sending them to the students that are actually sincerely interested in that.”
For prospective students, the takeaway is relatively simple: demonstrated interest is one piece of the admissions process at LC, but it is not the deciding factor. Students can show interest by visiting campus, communicating with admissions or professors, attending events or engaging with information the college sends them. At the same time Johnson emphasized that a lack of engagement will not by itself determine whether a student is admitted.
For current students, the process is a reminder that the admissions decisions made before we arrive on campus can have consequences long after we enroll. The people filling the seats in our classrooms, the size of future classes and the resources devoted to recruiting students all begin with decisions made during the admissions process.
Author
About the Author
