<p>Good job as adcom? Now, that is a topic I haven’t really considered before. I would think for some schools a “good job” would be just filling in the class profile, so many URMs, so many History majors, so many kids for the dart team… purely, almost a “Hey, I still have slot open for a Nerf Herder!” idea.</p>
<p>But I think Mammall is on the right track, as are some others too. Just like undergrad adcoms will review prospectives SATs, ACTs, GPAs, the quality of the applicant to graduate school will be somewhere in the stats - clearly reflective of the adcom’s nod four or five years earlier. </p>
<p>I think I would love to be an adcom for about 3-5 years. How great would that be to read those essays, rejoice in the kids’ terrific stats, laugh (up my sleeve?) at the nationally ranked volleyball player with a SAT score less than 1000 (who will be admitted to our neuroscience program). Anyway, it would be a neat-o job, at least for a little while.</p>
<p>I wonder if looking at students’ resumes and test scores as they enter grad school would say much about the quality of the admissions officers’ work. It would be impossible to pry apart the potential that the adcom saw at the point of admission from the value added by 4 years of college education.</p>
<p>Shortest answer: We can’t, because our personal sample sizes are too small (for most of us, anyway).</p>
<p>Short answer: I agree with fencersmother, but I’d broaden the institutional range. At the top, if the admissions staff has picked students based on intellect, accomplishments, energy, and personal qualities, they’ve probably picked multiple future leaders, even if they’ve guessed wrong on some–e.g, they might have picked a future Steve Jobs and not Steve Wozniak, or vice versa.</p>
<p>Longer answer starts here, focused on the elements of “a good job” that we might be able to detect from the university’s web site, CC, and meeting the admissions staff.</p>
<p>1) The admissions staff should recognize the uniqueness of each individual applicant, even when many of the applicants seem to be “much of a muchness.” Admittedly, that’s extremely hard to do, when there are 20,000 of them. But if a published description of an applicant starts out “another . . . ,” it’s probably not a good sign. In one recent thread, I think Northstarmom illustrated the reaction you’d hope for: She’s obviously interviewed a large number of applicants with the trip-to-Costa-Rica-to-build-a-school or the-trip-to-India-to-work-in-a-clinic, but she explores their individual experiences and motivations through her interview questions.</p>
<p>Sincerely,
Another scruffy-lookin’ Nerf Herder</p>
<p>Add MIT to the list of schools that has community participation - there is a faculty committee (CUAFA) with student members that is charged with shaping Admissions and Financial Aid policy. And it hires at least one admissions officer, usually two or three, for one-year stints, from each year’s graduating class. And of course there are the admissions bloggers helping with recruitment.</p>
<p>from a student / parent perspective, I thought the admit officers did a good job who had enthusiasm, were professional in demeanor, knew who the kid was they were talking to, and gave correct information. BTW - the schools with the absolute wonderful admit officers didn’t turn out to be the schools my S chose, while the school he did choose - and is very happy with - was represented by a first admit officer who didn’t do any of the above. We sometimes reflect that if that officer were the only contact he had with the school, he may not have made the same choice — So yes - I do believe that some kids might be lopping schools off their lists (especially early in the process) because of an unpleasant /uninformative / rude / incorrect contact.</p>
<p>This is another wonky, institutional-style measure of a “good job,” but I think another revealing data point is the win statistic vs. schools that are true peers. If cross admits to, say, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton are overwhelming choosing one of those schools, it probably reflects, at least in part, on the work of the admissions office.</p>
<p>Oh, that seems right on the money, Marathon. Yes, if admitted to MIT, but not to PennState Schreyers Honors, something might be amiss at one or the other institution. (my DH contends it is the same 10,000 students applying to HYP-types anyway, but that’s a subject for another thread). </p>
<p>I wonder if things get a bit dicier with smaller, lesser known, schools, though they do tend to be less selective - though not always.</p>
<p>^If a school is losing cross-admits to schools of similar prestige (maybe my examples could’ve been better), then one of the likely weak links would be admissions. Similarly, if a school is losing cross admits to less prestigious colleges (and it’s not a case of apples and oranges like merit vs. need-only FA), then that might be a sign of weakness, particularly about the communications/PR functions of an admissions office.</p>
<p>Having looked at 20 “quirky” colleges, I wonder how they get that way. Are they looking for certain kinds of students, or did they just happen upon a critical mass of quirky students and now that’s who is drawn to them? At Grinnell orientation, they described how the social consciousness of the college evolved from its original religious roots to the present. I have to think they aren’t just looking for the tuba player, but something more elusive.</p>
<p>I would think that for the higher-end schools, one could not measure success for quite a few years and that there are several competing objectives. I suspect that such schools would like to admit students who go on to play prominent roles in business, government and non-profit sectors and, depending upon the school, in the fine and performing arts. They would also like to admit a class whose contributions enhance the school’s endowment. This involves both picking people who will be economic winners and people whose families are already economic winners. Other goals may be measurable much sooner. For example, one might say success includes picking athletes whose academic performance and capabilities are not that much different from the median student while producing decent athletic results. Given the commitment to broaden the student body, success probably includes selecting non-traditional students (minorities and others) who have comparable graduation rates and comparable academic performance to the more traditional admits.</p>
<p>At a lesser school, producing higher graduation rates and people who play prominent roles in the region in which the school is located might be meaningful goals. Admitting a class whose subsequent contributions will help support the school economically will also be important.</p>
<p>Since there are many goals and the schools likely do not have an articulated way of making tradeoffs among the goals, I think it will be hard to judge whether the admissions committees have succeeded.</p>
<p>It might be a bad sign for your admissions office if one of the university’s distinguished faculty members writes an editorial such as “Test Takers or Scientists?” for Chemical & Engineering News, see pubs.acs.org/cen/editor/83/8305edit.html</p>
<p>Richard N. Zare is Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Natural Science at Stanford University, and has chaired the Department of Chemistry there since 2005. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1983 and the Wolf Prize (often viewed as a precursor to the Nobel) in 2005. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has chaired the National Science Board. He is beyond a doubt one of the most brilliant and creative scientists I have ever met–and doesn’t need this endorsement from me!!</p>
<p>That being said, I agree with his editorial only in part–the problem identification is spot-on, but I’m not sure that his take on its origin is completely right.</p>
<p>^ lol, mini, . . . and other relatives, friends, acquaintances, and anyone else I <em>personally</em> think should be admitted.</p>
<p>On a different tack, I think an admissions office is doing a really good job if the applicant learns something in the course of the application. This was relatively rare, in our experience. QuantMechPrime learned several things from last year’s Northwestern application, which referred to Hans Holbeins’ painting, The Ambassadors, and asked applicants to identify objects with which they might be pictured, in a similar formal portrait. The painting includes an anamorphic figure low in the foreground (easily found on Google images), and it has appreciable symbolic depth. As a drawback of this particular choice of painting, part of its symbolism is explicitly Christian–the Dean of Admissions posted a disclaimer and explanation on the web site after receiving comments. While I can understand that some might question the appropriateness of the choice of painting for that reason, I thought that there was a real attempt by the admissions office to engage the applicants intellectually, while at the same time gaining personal information about them–a rarity in the applications process.</p>
<p>The application for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill also had interesting questions that repaid thought.</p>
<p>Even the “Why X University?” questions can cause an applicant to learn something, while rooting around the X University web site.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you have a fluent writer who unexpectedly has writer’s block with an application essay, it might be the general uncertainty of the process, or it might be the eleventh essay that has to be cranked out, but it might actually be “dud” questions.</p>
<p>I understand that looking at the attrition rate, or the number of kids who actually graduate (particularly in four years) is a pretty good indicator of whether or not the adcom did a good job. What was the book about the guy who was the admissions counselor at Wesleyan? Did anyone read that? He spent all this time and money lobbying for one of his special favorite applicants – and the kid washed out of the college after three weeks! I found that rather telling. You’d think there’d be some accountability for admissions people who regularly did things like that.</p>
<p>I agree with the suggestion in this thread that parents can directly assess how well a college does in recruiting-as-such, being welcoming and enticing in postal mailings, emails, info sessions, campus tours, and the like. Being obnoxious when dealing with prospies is below industry standard for any college. </p>
<p>I’m less sure how much students’ matriculation decisions, when offered more than one chance to enroll, are based on admission office behavior or on something else. Because most colleges have a yield below 50 percent of admitted students who actually enroll, influencing that figure could be very important for the college, but I don’t know if admission offices have power to influence that much.</p>
<p>i’ve often wondered when i would see a thread like this…</p>
<p>this is a very interesting question, but rather hard to answer objectively, simply because each individual institution has different priorities. i would forward that an admissions officer is doing a good job when they are able to balance these priorities successfully while still maintaining ethical and professional judgement in whatever they do. i would also add that any admissions officer who doesn’t remember that they have a social responsibility (as their employers surely do) isn’t too impressive. </p>
<p>all of this does, however, become very difficult nowadays, mostly due to the serious constraints - especially with respect to human resources - many admissions offices face. with the volume of applications and visitors many schools receive, reading 25-30 applications per day, 7 days a week, 10-12 weeks per year is tough. so is being on a plane every 5 days for 2 months in the fall and a month in the spring. and frankly, the pay ain’t great (although mho is if you’re working in admissions or education for the money, you’re not in it for the right reason!). with the time constraints and fatigue, things can easily be overlooked - we are human. nevertheless, i’ve definitely noticed people in my office and others who appear to be doing a much better job than their peers - like any profession, there are people who are extremely passionate about their work and others who just clock in and clock out.</p>
<p>One additional measure (in my mind) is how good it is at finding those atypical kids worth taking a chance on. That’s really the satisfying part of the job. There ought to be room in each entering class for kids who don’t present the ideal stats but still seem to have that certain something. Can you recognize those kids’ potential from their app? Can you successfully advocate for them so their files makes it into the “admit” pile? Seeing those kids enroll–and succeed–makes up for the cruddy pay and overlong hours on the road.</p>