I’m curious as to the incentives that Admission’s Officers have for maximizing yield on their admits. In particular, are they rewarded monetarily based on their yield after admissions. And, if so, does this vary by school?
Thinking back, there were very different approaches by each school and I’m wondering if there is any correlation between their approach and their personal incentives.
public school principals and school officials are rewarded on improved graduation rates, college matriculation rates and so on. Thats why there is no minimum GPA to graduate anymore in many high schools and inflated GPAs from the bottom up.
I’m sure yield is one measurement of AO’s quality of work. It will be presented by the admissions office to school administration and trustees. Whether it will translate to monetary reward is any one’ guess. I do think different schools may have different ideas and philosophies regarding how to manage yield. Some believe working diligently with admitted students and families as well as presenting the school in its best shape on revisit days make a difference. Others may believe students choose whatever they believe is the best fit regardless what the school does post admission. Still others are more cynical and would manage yield mostly at the admission stage, trying to guess if they have a realistic chance to yield a student and deciding to admit or waitlist them accordingly.
And I doubt it has much to do with individual AO’s “personal incentive”. I think the admissions office sets the strategies and budget for post admission activities in yield management. AOs are carrying out the agenda accordingly. In the end, high yield is only partially the result of AOs’ efforts. All aspects of the school will be in the play in the process.
I would guess that at the end of each season, the department reviews the whole process, from people requesting info right through to acceptances and enrollment to see how effective the admissions department was as well as to think about the school overall. Do they get enough interest from the right kinds of students? If they lose a bunch of kids they thought were great because they wanted to swim and the school has no pool or team, they might think about whether they want to address that. Or not.
As for personal incentives, I doubt it. If that were my incentive, I would just admit weak or weird students who were unlikely to get offers elsewhere. You see where I am going with this, right? AOs are good enough at their jobs to game the system so incentives can backfire as well.
There is also a tricky balance between letting a kid know you really want him and pushing a kid into making a decision that may not be the right one for him. In the end, having happy kids who will thrive is essential.
In our experience, the post-admission contact from AOs ranged from highly persistent to nonexistent. It may have more to do with individual personalities. In some instances the coach seemed to have taken the place of an AO post-admission, and quite aggressively.
^^Personally, the aggressive ones really stressed me out. I was happy for the "Do you have questions about the program? " calls though. But AOS didn’t make any of the calls, stressful or helpful.
@gardenstategal I don’t think AOs can just accept “the weak and the weirded” even if they have “personal incentives”. Yield is not the only consideration. To enroll as many most qualified and capable students as possible is the ultimate goal.
Plus, acceptance decisions aren’t made unilaterally.
At least for the most selective schools, I can’t see AOs being compensated on any bonus type system. I’m sure success factors into individual and group evaluations, just like results focus into any employee’s reviews. In our family’s experience, we knew the schools wanted our kids but never felt pressure or pushing, just courtesy and friendliness when we reached out. It was actually pretty hands off and that was intentional IMO. I think the adults in this function realize they are dealing with 13, 14, 15 year olds and want them to make decisions on fit which helps lead to happy and successful students down the road.
For schools where decisions are made by committee, I can’t see how the AO would be held accountable for yield. I can see how he may be somewhat accountable for number of applications from his territory.
AOs’ diligihence makes a difference in yield but I doubt it’s a determine factor. Ultimately, AOs may be able to tip the scale for an admitted student only when they are on the fence or already leaning to their school. It seems other aspects or the totality of the school are driving yield more than AOs.
@panpacific , that was my point. If you give people the wrong incentive, in this case, high yield, they’ll give you the wrong results. It would be easy to get a high yield but it’d require a sacrifice of real institutional goals.
@gardenstategal I think a likely scenario is that AOs’ work is evaluated by a multi demsional matrix including number of applicants received relative to incoming class size, quality and diversity of the applicant pool, average SSATs/GPA/class ranking of admitted students, admit rate AND yield. So, yield alone as an incentive would be a wrong incentive but when its one of them, it would be justified. That being said, I don’t think AOs will be held “accountable” for a less than ideal yield rate for most schools anyway because admissions is part of the school operation. A student doesn’t choose a school more likely because of reasons other than AOs not doing a good job.
We did not proceed forward on one school because of the interview. Another school dropped way to the bottom due to the tour. I have another friend that had a similar experience with the interview. Both my friend and I drop 2 of the top 5 day schools in Boston due to our AO experience. I would personal weigh the impact of the AO to be quite high. There is a very limited amount of time to make that first impression and the AO takes up a significant part of that time.
@laenen The most difficult decisions on whether to enroll school A or school B, as observed on this board and elsewhere, rarely come down to which school’s AO was nicer and how interviews went. As a matter of fact, I doubt it is ever a major consideration in enrollment decisions at all. By the time you are evaluating which school to choose, tours and interviews were things so yesterday. And that’s not wrong thinking either because you are moving on, admissions office becoming a thing you will never need to “deal with”.
^^^This. Our son interviewed here at home with an alum. After four years at Choate, we never once set foot in the admissions office. I have no idea what it even looks like much less who the AOs are. They have no bearing at all on a student’s experience once at the school. We did get to know the AD after the fact in another of his roles, but had no contact with the admissions office at all. I would hate to think that anyone would bypass a good school because of one tour or one person.
I can not speak for others or what was reported on the board. I can only speak for myself and in our experience. Here is how I break down the AO experience. There are 3 parts. 1. Deciding where you are going to apply. 2. Application process. 3. Deciding on which school to attend. I found that the importance of the AO role diminshes from 1 to 3 but at step #3, the events and experiences in my mind were not irrelevant.
Here is how my experiences in #1, #2, #3
If Step #3 was irrelevant, then the schools would not have as many functions as they have to close the deal. In our case, the AO’s and coaches reached out multiple times.
Again – this was my experience and my opinion of the process.
Schools know (or they should know) that at Step #3, there’s only so much they could do and the difference their effort could make is most likely be to the cross admits among yield threatening peer schools. If they could offer significantly more FA, for example, then that might be truly impactful. Otherwise, AOs’ effort post-admission could only go so far. That may not be your experience, @laenen but what I’m trying to say is that the admissions office may be reflective of the school spirit, but other than that it doesn’t have much to do with the true experience one will have as a student, as @ChoatieMom pointed out. Everyone likes to feel welcomed and appreciated of course. That’s why I think AOs should be welcoming and encouraging, but try not to get caught up in that part of the process after you have the admission in hand.
I know of at least one case (not our family) where the AO was so pushy and insistent after M10, that it negatively impacted the family’s impression of the school. That’s what made me wonder about the compensation originally.
“When you have an acceptance in hand, I found that how the interactions from #1 and #2 had an impact on how receptive I was in receiving “the closing” push. It is at this point when there are competing offers that the AO needs to sell and close the deal.”
Wow, I guess I look at the AO’s and the entire office’s role quite a bit differently. When one kid was accepted to all the top tier schools applied to, I didn’t ever view it as a closing push or expected anything like that. In fact, if I had felt they were trying to “close the deal”, it would have been a real turn off as we were talking about a 13 year old kid at the time. Instead, what I expected and what unfolded was AOs, both the interviewer my kid had and the rest of the staff, was charming and welcoming, available to answer any questions, they made it clear they liked my kid and wanted kid in their community, they paired my child with revisit hosts which we a good fit. But no pressure, no push, no trying to close the deal. Everything was low key and tailored toward helping a very young teen make the decision the student was most comfortable with. Again, for a 13/14 year old, that’s all I think is appropriate.
The only time we let an AO influence a decision to skip a school was where the interviewer in Admissions would also have been the kid’s coach in primary sport. Said coach rubbed all of us the wrong way and that school, quite popular here, did not make the final application list. Otherwise, AOs are just a temporary encounter, good or not so good, just like college tour guide. Not something to base a decision on IMO.