admissions officers

Answered

Hi @Brookdep,

In general you do not want to do this. Why? This kind of engagement may be construed as over-reaching, being aggressive and/or an act of desperation.

The litmus test for how much you want to connect to the college you are applying to should be based on your research into the Common Data Set for the college under Section C7. Relative importance of each of the following academic and nonacademic factors in your first-time, first-year, degree-seeking (freshman) admission decisions.

So if you look up say Bowdoin College, under "Level of Applicant's Interest" the check box which is "not considered" is marked. Therefore you will know that Bowdoin's admission process/policy does not consider how much you have engaged with the school prior and during the application cycle.

Now if you look at Trinity College's CDS, you will see that "Level of Applicant's Interest" as important. So it maybe okay to reach out to Trinity Admissions and ask them questions etc.

Another way to think about this is that "Seller Schools" like Ivyies, Stanford, Top Liberal Arts Colleges, UChicago, Duke are uber-competitive and they don't want to be bothered with applicants vying/jockeying for a better position based on engaging with admissions. They typically do not have the bandwidth to socialize with applicants anyway. "Buyer schools" are your 2nd, 3rd, 4th tier schools and they are trying to fill the enrollment slots with as many paying applicants as possible so they are more than happy to chat it up with prospective buyers. So a Harvard or Yale or Stanford runs like a Tesla, Ferrari, Rolls Royce dealership. You don't get a discount. But your Lehigh's, Bucknells, WakeForests run like big three car dealerships and there are many factory incentives and discounts going on to move inventory.

Hope this helps.