What to ask your admissions officer -- and why

Let's imagine you're a college admissions officer. You're sitting there with a pile of applications. You read a file. Janey, 4.2 GPA, soccer team captain, 9 APs. Two files down, two high schools over -- Christa, 4.2 GPA, soccer team captain, 9 APs. How do you decide whether it's Christa or Janey who should go into the "Admit" pile?

One way colleges make this decision is they look at how much Janey and Christa have invested in learning about their school. Has a student done a visit? A virtual tour? Have they signed up for emails from the college? Do they open those emails? Do they follow the links? Have they talked with an admissions counselor when they came to their school? or at a college fair? Have they emailed their admissions counselor? This is called tracking Demonstrated Interest, and it's a real thing colleges quantify and consider when making decisions about whom to accept.

If Christa has signed up for the college's emails, opens them and follows the links on the regular, and she goes to the college fair and asks some questions, it seems like she's excited about the university and actively interested! Even better if she was able to do a visit, or at least a virtual visit.

Janey, on the other hand, may have only visited the main web page a couple of times. She might have just added the college because her friends were applying, or because her parents told her to.

Christa's Demonstrated Interest just moved her into the "accepted" pile. Why? Because colleges want to accept more of the students who will, come April, take a look at their pile of acceptances and choose them back, in turn.

One of the best ways to maximize your demonstrated interest is to get in touch with your admissions counselor. Meet with them when they're at your school, go to the big college fair when it's in town, or write them an email.

But what do you ask them? After all, if you've been reading the websites carefully, you might already know lots of things.

So here are some ideas:

• Ask what some of the strongest programs/majors are at their university.

  • The cheekier/riskier correlate to this question -- what are some of the weaker programs?

    
    

• What is the first year-experience like? Are there programs to help freshmen settle in, academically and socially? What are they?

  • If this is a school where a significant percentage of students start on a satellite campus -- how are these students integrated into campus life later?

    
    

• How easy is it for students to get research or mentorship opportunities, really? Are there any available for freshmen and sophomores, or are they mostly limited to upperclassmen?

  • Similar question: how many students are able to get part-time jobs on campus?

• How many students double major? If it's a larger university, is it possible to double-major, or minor, across schools? 

  • Are there ways to integrate both majors into your senior-year capstone experiences?

• Are there peer tutoring opportunities/support in key subjects? How accessible are they?

  • You can ask this question as someone who might want to seek out the tutoring, or you can ask it as someone who's tutored before and wants to continue peer tutoring in college.

• If it's a college that's part of a consortium, or one that has satellite campuses that are nearby (not in another country) -- ask how easy it is really to take classes at the neighboring institution.

  • How many students do it? How often? Do the class schedules line up? Are there shuttles?

• If you're considering the Honors College or a Living Learning Community, how separated from the overall campus experience are those opportunities? Do students make friends, and have classes, with students outside that framework?

  • Honors colleges often have a liberal arts "bent," and/or the classes can seem like extra pile-ons to a STEM major, which might already be heavier on requirements. How are STEM students integrated into the Honors curriculum?

These questions to show demonstrated interest can work in-person, when meeting a college counselor on a college tour, at your high school, or at a fair.

They can also work by email. Most college admissions pages will have a list of the admissions counselors responsible for your area -- look them up and ask them a question! Not only will you add some points to your demonstrated interest score, but you will learn some info that will help you choose whether the college is the right place for you.