Colleges Mine Data on Their Applicants To determine ‘demonstrated interest,’ some schools are tracking how quickly prospective students open email and whether they click links
By Douglas Belkin
Wall Street Journal
January 26, 2019
Some colleges, in an effort to sort through a growing number of applications, are quietly tracking prospective students’ online interaction with the schools and considering it in deciding whom to admit.
Enrollment officers at institutions including Seton Hall University, Quinnipiac University and Dickinson College know down to the second when prospective students opened an email from the school, how long they spent reading it and whether they clicked through to any links. Boston University knows if prospective students RSVP’d online to an event—and then didn’t show.
Schools use this information to help determine what they call “demonstrated interest,” or how much consideration an applicant is giving their school. Demonstrated interest is becoming increasingly important as colleges face a rising number of applications and want to protect or improve their yields—the percentage of accepted applicants who enroll.
Gregory Eichhorn, vice president for admissions at Quinnipiac in Hamden, Conn., said the technological sophistication of the analysis has ramped up considerably.
“If we ask someone for an interview, we look at how they respond, how quickly they respond or if they don’t respond at all,” said Mr. Eichhorn. “It helps us make a decision.”
At Seton Hall University, in South Orange, N.J., students receive a score between 1 and 100 that reflects their demonstrated interest, said Alyssa McCloud, vice president of enrollment management. 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).
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