Demonstrated Interest vs. Demonstrated Understanding - Episode 025

Episode: Demonstrated Interest and Demonstrated Understanding
Guest: Chris Teare
Host: Chris Bell

Cold Open

Chris Bell:
Demonstrated interest.

It’s you showing a college — or demonstrating — that you care about them.

Are you opening emails from them? Looking at their website? Are you visiting, if you can?

These things matter a lot to some colleges. They want to know if you like them. They want you to attend if they admit you.

The more you’ve shown that you like the college, the more likely they are to offer you admission.

My guest tonight is Chris Teare. He will explain this all to us.

He takes us to an even deeper level as well with demonstrated understanding. Not only are you interested, but do you really understand what makes a particular college unique?

Let’s jump in.

Show Introduction

Announcer:
It’s The College Talk Show.

Tonight’s theme: Demonstrated Interest and Demonstrated Understanding, with special guest Chris Teare.

And now, here’s your host, Chris Bell.

Guest Introduction

Chris Bell:
My guest tonight is Chris Teare.

Chris is a Certified Educational Planner who has spent decades helping students and families navigate the college search with thoughtfulness and clarity.

He’s been a university admissions officer, has visited most of the colleges in the Fiske Guide and the Princeton Review lists, serves on the Fiske College Guide Editorial Advisory Group and the Princeton Review National College Counselor Advisory Board, and has written extensively about college admissions and fit.

Chris, I’m really glad you’re here tonight.

Chris Teare:
Chris, thank you very much for the invitation. Looking forward to our conversation very much.

What Does Demonstrated Interest Mean?

Chris Bell:
Thank you. This is exciting. We’re talking about demonstrated interest.

When people say demonstrated interest related to college admissions, what do they mean?

Chris Teare:
My understanding is they mean touches.

They mean times when a prospective applicant is in touch with that college or university.

That can take the form of requesting information, opening emails, clicking on links, taking virtual tours, attending webinars, meeting with the college representative at the student’s high school, saying hello at a college fair.

Even better, visiting the college campus, checking in when you arrive so they know you’ve been there.

Chris Bell:
Good point.

Chris Teare:
Going on the tour, and then in particular, following up with the admissions officer who reads applications from your school.

Chris Bell:
Wow. Yeah, that’s a lot.

And I guess I’ve heard that they actually have software that tracks this, and you kind of earn a little dot every time you do one of those things.

Is that your sense of this?

How Colleges May Track Interest

Chris Teare:
That’s absolutely my sense of it.

Last summer, I went over to meet a family from Texas with whom I was working when they were touring Connecticut College, not far from where I live most of the year.

The dean there, Andy Strickler, showed me the software they use, where they have a 20-point affinity scale.

If you’re a Connecticut kid or a northeastern regional kid and you’re not up in the teens — double digits — on their affinity scale, they wonder if you really care.

He did say if they have someone in the pool who’s from Arkansas and there are even two or three points of contact, that’s worth taking a look at because they don’t get a lot of applicants from places like Arkansas.

The places that really care about demonstrated interest are the ones that have a challenge meeting their net tuition revenue targets.

In other words, they have a real challenge enrolling a big enough class to pay the bills.

A way to think about it is to look at the ratio of students admitted on a percentage basis in relation to the percentage of those who yield.

Chris Bell:
Oh yeah.

Chris Teare:
When I worked at Drew University, a wonderful liberal arts college with small grad programs in Madison, New Jersey, we admitted about six or seven out of every ten applicants, but we only yielded one or two of the ten we admitted.

So we tracked interest very closely because we didn’t want to extend offers that would not be accepted.

Every morning in my inbox, I had a report of the students from my territories who had been on the website, which pages they’d been on, how long they’d been on those pages.

It was a way for me to understand: were they really interested in Drew?

When Colleges Say They Do or Don’t Consider Interest

Chris Bell:
Some colleges say, “We pay attention to demonstrated interest in considering admissions,” and other colleges say they don’t.

Does that mean that if the college says they don’t pay attention, you don’t demonstrate interest there?

How does that play out?

Chris Teare:
That’s absolutely the right question.

Those Common Data Set ratings — there are places that say not considered. There are some that say considered. There are some that say important. And there are even some that say very important when it comes to demonstrated interest.

If they say they don’t consider it, that’s their policy.

And the more selective the school in relation to yield, the less they need to consider interest.

If you take a place like my alma mater, Amherst, they’ll admit less than one out of ten and they’ll yield four or five out of ten.

They don’t have to consider interest the same way because they’re going to win a lot of the time.

You look at the Ivy Plus schools. They don’t need to track interest because they know they’re a first-choice school for most students.

A way I sometimes tease kids to think about demonstrated interest is the prom proposal.

I say, “Look, before you put the ask out there, you want to have some indication that maybe you’ll get a yes.”

Chris Bell:
Yeah.

Chris Teare:
Colleges are a little like that. They’re protective of their admit rate, and they don’t want to make offers that aren’t going to be accepted.

So they try to suss out in advance: am I going to get a yes here before I put the offer out?

Demonstrated Interest vs. Demonstrated Understanding

Chris Bell:
Good point.

Now, Chris, you’ve taken this to another level.

You have talked about not only demonstrated interest, but demonstrated understanding.

What is this term? What are you getting at with this term you’ve coined?

Chris Teare:
First, I want to give credit where it’s due. The first time I ever heard the phrase demonstrated understanding was from Jonathan Burdick, who ran admissions at University of Rochester and then at Cornell University.

The idea here is demonstrated interest is quantitative.

You can count it.

You can count the number of interactions a student does or does not have. That’s that college affinity scale.

Demonstrated understanding is not quantitative. It’s qualitative.

It’s something that colleges evaluate through words — in essays, supplementary essays that they have in their applications, and in interviews if they offer them.

They’re looking for self-knowledge on the part of the student and knowledge of their own particular institution, which they would like to believe is truly unique.

And they’re looking for a way in which the applicant demonstrates an understanding of those special, even unique qualities that make it the right fit for that applicant.

How Students Demonstrate Understanding

Chris Bell:
How would a student demonstrate understanding of a school?

How does that come through?

Chris Teare:
It starts with research of the institution.

If you can’t get to campus, you’ve got to take every opportunity possible.

One of the unintended consequences that’s positive of COVID is that colleges got much better with their online presence and resources.

There are virtual tours. There are webinars. There are ways to do things that don’t cost any money if you can’t get to the campus.

Students need to use all those tools.

And ideally, they get to campus and they listen, and they look, and they take notes as soon as the visit is over.

They’re looking for the kinds of things that they can determine in advance the college might be asking them on supplementary essay questions.

These demonstrated understanding things are all over the place.

I’m always trying to get my students to look in advance before getting on campuses so they’ll be more aware of opportunities to have nuggets — specific details that will enable them to demonstrate their understanding of those places.

How to Find Chris Teare

Chris Bell:
If someone wants to keep the conversation going with you, how would they get in touch with you?

Chris Teare:
Thank you for that, Chris.

My email is simply my name and the word college at Gmail.

It’s christearecollege@gmail.com.

Chris Bell:
That was great.

Chris Teare: demonstrated interest versus demonstrated understanding.

Stick around. We’ll be right back.

Sponsor Message

Announcer:
This episode is brought to you by Bell College Consulting.

Visit bellcollegeconsulting.com to learn more.

The Common Data Set and Demonstrated Interest

Chris Bell:
That was amazing.

For demonstrated interest, Chris Teare mentioned the Common Data Set.

This is an often publicly available report provided by colleges themselves, listing a number of items each academic year for a particular college.

You can search out a Common Data Set. Just punch into Google the college’s name plus “Common Data Set,” and you will see a lot of great information in these reports.

Admittedly, it’s kind of like reading a tax form, but the information is there if you want to find it.

Question C7 in the Common Data Set report shows a grid of what the college pays attention to for admission.

For every college I can think of, the most important factors for admission are GPA, course rigor, extracurricular activities, letters of recommendation, and essays.

In C7, you can see if they report that they consider the applicant’s level of interest as well.

Using Chris Teare’s examples, here’s Connecticut College’s answer:

Yes, they’ll consider it.

And here’s Amherst’s answer:

They report that they don’t consider applicant interest.

Now, some of my colleagues will say that demonstrating interest still matters to some admissions reps, and I agree.

But if the Common Data Set report indicates demonstrated interest is not considered, that at least tells us that they likely don’t include it on their formal assessment rubric.

On the other hand, demonstrated understanding of a college and its unique qualities — that’s something that every college likely wants to see, especially if they ask “Why Us?” in a supplemental essay question.

Top Tips

Chris Bell:
Now, let’s do a sort of summary of today’s episode.

I call it Top Tips.

Announcer:
Top Tips. Top Tips.

Chris Bell:
Kind of a summary, but we call it Top Tips.

Top Tips regarding demonstrated interest and demonstrated understanding.

Number four: Many colleges care about demonstrated interest.

They’re trying to suss out if you’ll say yes if they offer you admission.

Number three: Demonstrated interest equals touches.

The number of times you interact with the college in some way.

Number two: Demonstrated understanding equals: can you articulate the special qualities of that college?

This can be evaluated through supplementary essays and maybe an interview.

And the number one tip for demonstrated interest and demonstrated understanding is:

Understanding a college begins with researching it.

Thank you again to Chris Teare for his helpful, sage advice and commentary.

And remember, the whole reason we care about this stuff is:

College is awesome.