Increase kid’s college acceptance chances with these easy tricks

It’s a dance between prospective students and prospective colleges that parents of high school seniors know all too well. Applying to various schools using the Common App, getting your letters of recommendation in order, deciding on your top choice, your plan B schools and your “reach” school. (That’s the school so hard to get into you probably wouldn’t make it but your high school counselor tells you to try it anyway.)

But how many parents are looking at things through the university’s eyes? I read an article about things that schools are looking for and want to share it.

First, schools know you’re applying to multiple places. On their end, schools want to weed out students who are less likely to enroll and pay them tuition if accepted. No school wants to be on the plan B list. So they look for something called “demonstrated interest” among their pool of applicants. The more demonstrated interest you’ve shown the more likely you are to be accepted.

What are they looking for?

They want people who have actually visited their school. When a potential student visits a school and takes an official tour they sign in at an admissions office. They have you do that for a reason. They track that. Then, on the Common App, the tool with which students apply to a multitude of colleges, there is a space that asks if the student visited the school and in what month and year. They cross-reference this with those signatures.

If there is a school you’re applying to that’s only a few hours from your home and you never visited it, they will red flag you as regarding them as a second or third choice.

When any college that has been applied to sends an email, even when you can tell by the subject line it's basically an ad, students should open it, click on links, spend time looking at the email, and look at those open links. Even if you’re not really looking, leave them open for a few minutes while you do something else. Why? Because many colleges and universities employ software that tracks if you have opened their emails and how long you spent looking at them. This shows the potential college your demonstrated interest.

One other thing, when colleges send recruiters to high schools students shouldn’t just grab a pamphlet. Even if they know it’s not their first-choice school, they should introduce themselves by name, and ask several questions. Why? Because very often that recruiter sitting at that table is the very same admissions officer who will be deciding who gets an offer and who does not.

It’s all a bit of a game. Might as well win it.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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