How to Demonstrate Interest During the College Admissions Process

campus visit, College admission, demonstrated interest, yield rate

Today, the selective college admissions process is a game of strategy. The days when high school seniors simply submitted applications and waited for a response based exclusively on the merits of their application are long gone. As colleges and universities act more and more like businesses, they demand more than just a completed application and enough evidence that you can do the work. They need to see a student show demonstrated interest. So, what is demonstrated interest in college admission and how can you show it to improve your odds of being accepted?

What is demonstrated interest in college admission?

Quite simply, colleges want to know that you are really, really excited about attending their institution. On its face, this expression of excitement lets a college know you have done your research, have considered all your options, and have chosen to apply because you feel strongly that you would be a great fit. You are letting the university know that you would be an active, interested, and engaged student.

But that’s only one aspect of demonstrated interest. There is another component of demonstrated interest that is not obvious at first glance: many colleges use demonstrated interest as an important tool to improve the odds of meeting their enrollment targets.

Demonstrated interest and the business of higher education

In the business world, companies are looking to grow by acquiring new customers. They employ a salesforce or spend money on online sales tools to build a pipeline of prospective customers. As these potential buyers work their way through the sales funnel, customer relationship management (CRM) software will place a probability on the likelihood that the prospect will convert to a paying customer based on both quantitative and qualitative factors. If the prospect filled out an online information request form but hasn’t interacted in the last few months despite being sent multiple follow up emails, the odds are low they will become a customer. However, if the prospect has been actively searching the site, has been asking follow-up questions, and has visited headquarters to learn more, the probability of becoming a customer dramatically improves.

In today’s world of higher education, the admissions office can also be viewed as the sales and marketing department of a college or university. Admissions offices do make decisions about who is accepted and who is rejected. But, at a higher level, their goal is to fill the right number of seats at the right price to meet budget. To do this, admissions offices must continue to grow the applicant pipeline. By accurately predicting the number of students accepted that will ultimately attend, an admissions office is accomplishing its top goal. This metric is called a college’s yield rate.

Yield rate in college admission

What is the yield rate and why do colleges find it important? Quite simply, the yield rate is the percentage of students admitted that ultimately enroll. Even at Harvard, not every accepted applicant becomes an enrolled student. However, Harvard does have a relatively high yield rate: over 80% of accepted applicants become Harvard undergraduates. Most colleges have a significantly lower yield rate with most hovering in the 20% range, meaning that only 1-in-5 admitted students end up attending these schools. In fact, besides the most selective universities, many colleges have seen their yield rate trend lower over the last decade due to the overall increase in applications per student.

Why do colleges care about the yield rate?

There are two reasons. First, understanding the factors driving a school’s yield rate allows it to plan accordingly. If a college needs to fill 1,000 slots to meet its budget and has a 25% yield rate, the admissions office will need to accept 4,000 applicants. (25% * 4,000 accepted applicants = 1,000 enrolled students). Similarly, a college with a 50% yield rate would need to accept 2,000 applicants to meet its 1,000 student target. From a business perspective, then, the yield rate is a tool for internal planning and budgeting. But, the yield rate also conveys information to certain consumers who presume that a high yield rate correlates positively to the quality of the college or university. Thus, Harvard is “better” than the hundreds of schools hovering around a 20% yield rate.

How colleges improve their yield rate

As businesses, colleges have learned to implement strategies to increase their yield rate. The main way they accomplish this is by adjusting their admissions process to favor the students who express more “interest” in the college than others. Colleges want to accept students who are more likely to enroll.

Tracking demonstrated interest

Most schools invest in enroll management software which tracks student (and even parent!) engagement. By initially signing up on the admissions site for information, colleges will begin sending you periodic emails. By clicking on these emails and spending time on a school’s site, the school can track your activity. Behind the scenes, this enrollment software will begin to assign you a score which measures your likelihood of applying (and accepting!). The more you engage with a college, the higher probability you are assigned which may help your admissions odds depending, of course, on how qualified you are as an applicant. As businesses, colleges are rating you as a prospect long before you submit an application for admission.

Accepting More Early Decision Candidates

Many schools are increasing their use of early decision (ED) to improve their yield rate by accepting more ED students than regular decision (RD) candidates. Without getting into the details of early applications in this blog post, suffice it to point out that the effective “yield rate” of an ED application is 100% as the student has promised to attend if accepted. For more on how this obsession with yield rate is changing the timeline for college admissions, see this post about Early Decision and Early Action.

How to show demonstrated interest in the college admissions process

The general rule for demonstrating interest is to do anything and everything that will indicate to the admissions office that you are a serious applicant and that you have a strong desire to attend. Your goal is for admissions officers to believe that if you are accepted you will likely attend. With that general guideline in mind, here are the ways to demonstrate interest.

Apply Early Decision

An early application indicates your demonstrated interest. Of course, ED is a stronger demonstration of interest, but even an early action (EA) application indicates you have put that school toward the top of your priority list. Of course, as ED is binding, please make sure this is truly your top choice and that the cost to attend is not prohibitive for your family.

Sign up for the admissions mailing list

Right on the admissions page of the college’s website is an invitation to receive more information about the college. This is absolutely the first thing you must do to express interest. By sharing your name, address, email, and phone number with the college, you are telling the sales and marketing department (i.e., admissions) that you are truly interested in learning more about the college. This act of giving the college your contact information allows it to activate their enrollment tracking CRM software.

Visit the college’s website

Now that you’re in their enrollment management system, colleges have tools to be able to see what pages on their website you visit and how long you spend on those pages. So, spend time on the site. Visit lots of pages. Take your time to read them. Take a virtual tour. Register for virtual information sessions. Demonstrate that you truly are interested in the college by exploring the website–often and in-depth. The side benefit is that you really will begin to learn whether this college is for you by spending the time to really read about it in detail.

Attend an admissions event

Colleges are expanding their reach to try to attract more and more applicants. These are marketing events (remember what I said is the true function of the admissions office?). But they also provide you an opportunity to learn more about the college–and to earn some demonstrated interest brownie points.

Whether the event is online (a “virtual information session”) or in person at a college fair, take the time to attend. Your registration is a signal of your interest. And at a fair, the effort you take to stop by the college’s table or booth–and fill out their contact card and leave it with the sales representative (a.k.a. “admissions officer”)–will be recognized in your electronic file that you established when you signed up for that mailing list!

Visit the college to show demonstrated interest

You have two opportunities to visit a college. First, you can do so in person (for more information about how to get the most from your college visits, read this post). Or you can do so virtually by signing up for a virtual tour. These online experiences can either be automated or they can be scheduled, live events whereby you visit the school on video with a student and to ask questions in real-time. You can do one or the other. But if you really want to go the extra mile to demonstrate interest, do both!

Communicate with an admissions officer

The best way to communicate with admissions offices is via email. Find your local representative and introduce yourself while asking specific questions about programs that interest you. You can also ask to be put in touch with students who share your interests. For example, if you want to learn more about the debate team, ask the admissions officer to put you in touch with the team captain. For more on how to communicate with admissions, read this post.

Follow colleges on social media

Instagram. Facebook. X (formerly Twitter). YouTube. TikTok. Every college has multiple channels through which to communicate its marketing messages. Following a school on social media is just one more way to demonstrate interest, and more than likely, they will link your social media presence with your email and other information from when you initially signed up for the mailing list.

Demonstrated interest is an important step in college admission

Certainly, there are more important factors that play a more important role in admissions, including your grades, the rigor of your high school courses, your test scores, and your extracurricular accomplishments. But all these achievements could be overlooked if you fail to demonstrate interest at certain colleges that track your engagement level.

For colleges to take you seriously, you need to take seriously this business about demonstrated interest. No matter how much you want to attend and how qualified you may be based on your admissions statistics, your college admissions advantages could be negated if you don’t take the time to show the admissions people that you really, really, really want to attend if accepted.

So, show the love to the schools on your college list. Demonstrate interest. Do it now and do it often to increase your chances of admission.

Need help with the college admissions process?

The team at Great College Advice has years of experience working with thousands of students as they navigate the college admissions process. We can help you prepare, select, and apply to colleges to give you the best chance of being accepted to your top choices. Of course we can help with demonstrating interest, but we will also help you with every other aspect of this process. Want to learn more? Just contact us on this form and we’ll set up a no-cost, no-obligation meeting so we can learn more about you and discuss how we can help make the college admissions process more successful and less stressful.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in January 2024 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Jared Hobson

VIEW ALL POSTS >