> 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).
So a student who (wisely) uses browser tracking blocking or disables images/tracking in their email client is negatively affected? That seems like a terrible heuristic.
Although the software mentioned is pretty good at scoring, a fair percentage of applicants to any university have had no prior interaction with that institution ("stealth applicants"). Moreover the jobs of admin staff are literally dependent on a high volume of qualified applicants. I doubt any admissions operation would use the absence of a score to preclude or penalize otherwise qualified applicants.
Most college emails from what I’ve seen use tracking pixels and magic links to track applicants’ activity. The magic links don’t need JS to work, it’s a pure serverside redirect from click.[college].edu (or similar) to the page in question.
Blocking tracking pixels is fairly common I think for privacy conscious folk.
In the email marketing world, not being able to distinguish recipients that are intentionally blocking tracking with recipients who are not interacting is a known issue. It's silly to group them together and use it as admissions criteria. Excluding privacy conscious users... to what end?
I think you're underestimating how many schools use this kind of tracking. It's practically industry standard. Elite schools like Harvard, Stanford, etc. along with smaller institutions all use these techniques.
I understand this knee-jerk reaction. However it is completely wrong. It is foolish to block tracking like this.
Blocking tracking on a university website or email correspondence would be like setting your LinkedIn profile to private prior doing research on a job opportunity.
This is the domain I work in at the moment and I can 100% assure you that anonymous behavior hurts your admission chances significantly.
Don't ever visit a campus without letting them know you are there. Same goes for email and web site visits.
That sounds miserable. Your job is to help institutions make bad decisions that deny educational opportunities to children who aren't clued into how to game the system?
The only mitigating aspet is that I suspect that this system isn't used at schools that deliver educations worth paying for.
We help students make good decisions to optimize their chances of getting into a top 100 university. I don't work for any institution.
We help candidates appear in their best light and once they have received an offer we actively work against the interest of the college to help the student get the best aid package possible.
Absolutely not. This sets a dangerous precedent. Students aren’t just trusting their data to your institution, but also all the other entities in between. It is foolish to punish privacy-conscious students. We do not want to create a world where advancement is only possible by giving up one’s privacy.
There are dozens of companies collecting and selling information about high school students. You can't take the sat or act and not be sold. Preventing the very people you do want to take note of your interest is cutting your nose off to spite your face. You can either accept it or not, but as an insider (not affiliated with a college) I can assure you that blocking tracking on email from admissions departments is a huge mistake. But hey, you do what you think us best.
In the grand scheme of things, the tracking data collected is nothing compared to what is collected on college applications and standardized tests. Unfortunatey, that’s the world we live in. Fortunately I am not a high school student, but there are many implications to consider here.
As an engineer, I would take issue with tracking students behavior. However, I am also more privacy conscious than the average engineer.
If you visit a campus with your (or as) a prospective student, be sure to take and register for the guided tour. Signals of interest like these are absolutely a factor during admission season. If you go and dont let them know, you are wasting part of the opportunity. Already taken the tour and want to go for a second or third visit then arrange to speak to a faculty member about the departments you are interested in. Your department of interest almost certainly has prospective student days. Try to time your visit with one.
Really unlikely for these kind of stats to ever be a deciding factor. Massive waste of time from an ROI factor excluding the fun in visiting. I can only see it mattering for a mid tier “safety” type school trying to boost their accept/decline rate by denying obvious safety school applicants.
Some college rankings place importance on vanity metrics like acceptance and matriculation rates. This is a reality. Top colleges are typically more sensitive to and interested in optimizing for these measures.
If you think that signaling intent as a student is not important, you are of course welcome to your opinion.
Just wanted to point out that while demonstrated interest is certainly a component in college admissions (like it or not), but varies from institution to institution on its importance.
Quick tip: if you're wondering whether a school actually considers demonstrated interest, you can Google up "[school] common data set" (without quotes). Look for Section C7, which indicates the relative weight of the various admissions factors. Just throwing it out there.
So a student who (wisely) uses browser tracking blocking or disables images/tracking in their email client is negatively affected? That seems like a terrible heuristic.