Demonstrated interest can be one of the more complex aspects of application strategy. Demonstrated interest is the degree to which you show a college that you are sincerely interested in coming to their school. It is a subtle but important tool that many colleges use to predict the likelihood that a student will enroll if admitted to the college - and it can increase your chance of admission at colleges that track it. As a general rule, demonstrated interest is more important to private colleges, but many public universities also track your interest. In short, unless you absolutely know otherwise, you should assume that the colleges on your list that you’re most interested in do take demonstrated interest into account. It can never hurt for the colleges you’re interested in to get to know you better.

College KickStart recently identified every school in their coverage universe where the Common Data Set entry for "level of applicant's interest" is reported as important or very important. Here are a number of key schools they identifed: