As the fight to get into the nation's top colleges intensifies, high-school students are embracing an unusual tactic to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack: letting schools know they are interested through regular contact with admissions offices and visits to campus.
Many schools have started taking a student's "demonstrated interest" into account when making admissions decisions, giving preference to applicants who have visited the school or kept in contact with its admissions office.
A study conducted by the National Association for College Admission Counseling recently found that 56 percent of the 595 institutions surveyed said they considered a student's demonstrated interest a factor in admissions decisions.
Dartmouth, though, was not among those institutions that said "demonstrated interest" gave applicants a leg up on the competition. The College does "not at all in any way" give preference for demonstrated interest, according to Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg.
Thirty percent of schools in the NACAC survey said they place "moderate" or "considerable" emphasis on a student's demonstrated interest. The other 26 percent said it plays a "limited" role. Just 16 percent of highly-selective schools -- defined as those with admissions rates below 50 percent -- considered the factor, according to the report.
Colleges that do use demonstrated interest -- Emory University, for example -- will frequently reject exceptional applicants who have not made any overtures beyond simply filing an application, on the assumption that those students would not have enrolled if accepted anyway.
At Emory, the admissions office uses a database to record all contacts by students, including attendance at info sessions and college fair booths, orders for the Emory admissions video, visits to campus and other correspondence with the admissions office. All factors are taken into account when admissions decisions are made.
"What we've found over the years is that students who've really researched us and really know what we're all about are the students who are happiest and most involved," Emory director of enrollment services told The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Dartmouth is along with the majority of the highly-selective schools who continue to ignore demonstrated interest, choosing instead to base admissions decisions solely on the substance of the application.
"We have Early Decision when students show in a formal, committed way that Dartmouth is their first choice," Furstenberg said. "Our whole philosophy is to go for the best applicants in the pool based on the application they submit, and the yield will work its way out."
Taking demonstrated interest into account in admissions decisions allows schools to slant their admissions toward students with a high likelihood of enrolling at that school. According to Furstenberg, demonstrated interest is just another way of manipulating a yield -- the statistical measurement of what percentage of accepted students actually enroll. Schools that can improve their yield can lower their admission rate, making the school look more selective.
A high yield and a low acceptance rate are often viewed as signs of a college's prestige nationwide and are reported in many college guides. U.S. News and World Report, which prints the most famous rankings of American colleges and Universities decided last year to remove yield as a factor in their ranking calculations after critics claimed some colleges were artificially manipulating their yield via various means.
"We would rather have a good class than a good yield," Furstenberg said in regard to choosing to accept the absolute best students in the pool rather than taking their demonstrated interest into account so that they yield will be better.
Furstenberg also questioned the fairness and equity of using demonstrated interest as a factor in admissions decisions.
"I don't think its fair or ethical to base a decision on anything other than the information a student presents in the application," Furstenberg said. "They should get an honest response to their credentials."
Other critics claim that demonstrated interest is unfairly skewed against low-income students who may not receive advising encouraging them to contact schools they are interested in or do not have the money to visit those schools.
In October 2002, NACAC passed a resolution to look into whether the association should look into taking a formal stand on demonstrated interest, but the review has not been completed. The same year, the association ruled that schools could not limit the number of non-binding early applications a student filed but Harvard, Yale and Stanford have since then sidestepped the ruling by employing "Single Choice Early Action" programs.
