One of the most stressful time for high school students and their parents is deciding what colleges to apply to and navigating the application process itself. Aside from the process that one can control, schools are now employing “demonstrated interest” or how much consideration an applicant is giving their school.
The Wall Street Journal just ran a front page article about this significant trend of schools looking at a myriad of metrics to evaluate a candidate’s interest. For example, at Seton Hall University, receive a score between 1 and 100 that reflects their demonstrated interest, and the score includes about 80 variables including how long they spent on the school’s website, whether they opened emails and at what point in high school they started looking on the website (the earlier the better).
Schools can also buy software that tracks data on prospective students. Among the largest providers is Technolutions whose service generates a dashboard summarizing thousands of data points on each student and is used by 850 schools. I walked away from reading this article believing that we are just around the corner for employers, credit companies, and others with a vested interest in the details on what you do, where you do it, and how you spend your time to follow a similar path. If universities can do it, who can’t?