We’ve entered a new digital age, where your decisions about what emails to open, links to click, websites to visit, and social media to engage with are collected and combed through by Big Business for information, both general and specific. Unfortunately, it’s no different in the field of higher education.
I have written about demonstrated interest before, but now your indirect interest—beyond visiting a school or writing to the admissions office—is being tracked by colleges and universities, using data mining to gauge student interest. As the article below states, universities are not always upfront about their use of data mining during their college admissions process. The best advice I have for students interested in a particular college is to show interest the old-fashioned way. Make a visit if possible, and reach out to your regional admissions rep and let them know about you.
Please read this article to get a sense of what the practice of data mining looks like for potential students: