Do colleges track demonstrated interest?

SSome colleges weigh how much contact an applicant has had with them, and readers there notice even small signs of it, while others, including many of the most selective, say they do not consider it at all. One application we have read asked whether the student had learned about the college through a campus visit or admissions programming. He answered that he had attended one online admissions event, and a reader took that single event as a sign he truly wanted to be there. It was a small thing, and at that college it counted.

Families who guess wrong pay in either direction, by ignoring a factor that is being weighed or by spending autumn weekends on gestures that register nowhere.