This old adage is most commonly dispensed as dating advice, seemingly for a bygone era. It essentially means that if you let the other person talk a lot (in other words, act interested!) then that person will walk away thinking YOU were the interesting one. Bleck, right?

Well, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater just yet, there is one place where this advice will still serve you well: the college admissions process.

Let’s get a bit of perspective about why acting interested matters.

In 2000, the University of Chicago received 1,648 applications for freshman admission. In 2013 they received 30,369. They sent letters of admissions to 2,676 applicants that year (that’s an 8.8% admit rate), with the goal of welcoming 1,400 students to campus in the fall of 2013. Now it may be that the freshman class was smaller in 2000, but even if it was half that size, look at the chances of getting in 14 years ago compared to today. Yikes.

And this isn’t just an issue at the nation’s most selective colleges. It seems that one of the most common headlines in college newspapers is the annual ‘Record Number of Applications Received This Year!”. This is certainly the case for the University of Oregon. With nearly 22,000 applications for the 3,800 spots in the freshman class, admissions has dropped more than 10% in just a few short years.

So, how does all this relate to cheesy dating advice? Well, with all those applications, colleges are being forced to make some tough calls. Although they know that not every person they accept will decide to attend their institution, they have to turn away a lot of otherwise qualified applicants who would very likely be a great addition to their campus community.

In recent years, more colleges have turned to “Demonstrated Interest” as a way to make choices.

Here’s a potential scenario: Let’s say there are 15 highly qualified, nearly identical applicants but only 5 remaining spots at College X. By looking at the signals for demonstrated interest that they’ve been keeping track of, the admissions team might see that 3 of those applicants visited campus, 2 met with members of the admissions team at college fairs, 1 had an extensive email conversation with an admissions rep about designing her own major, and 2 had come to the college’s admissions page to request information and join the mailing list. That leaves 7 applicants remaining who had not reached out in any way during the college search and application phase–the first time their name turned up on the college’s radar was when the application arrived.

By looking at those actions, the admissions team might surmise that the 8 applicants who demonstrated interest would be more likely to accept an offer of admission. Those 8 would be better bets than the 7 who didn’t engage at all. With so many applications to read, they need to rely on something that can help in their predictions.

Even graduate programs are jumping on the boat. Schools like Duke and Northwestern are using software to track demonstrated interest among MBA applicants.

The moral of this story is that as you hone in on the colleges and universities that you really like, be sure to reach out to the admissions office and let them know BEFORE you submit the application that they are on YOUR radar. Listen to what they have to say, ask questions that allow them to tell their story. You may learn more about what makes the school a fit for you, and you may improve your chances at admission at the same time. See? Interested is interesting after all.