https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-profession-on-the-edge?cid=gen_sign_in
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Hmmm. Obscured admission standards, test optional and common app were all deliberate efforts to boost number of applicants to colleges, and now AO’s complain they are overwhelmed? Seems like they created their own problems.
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As parents we might think of them as “gatekeepers” - but in reality, it’s a marketing/sales job, with a quota to meet both in enrollment quantity, but crucially also in application quantity.
The “sales charts” have to show an upward trend very year in application numbers and test stats, as this justifies tuition increases. Revenue has to continue to go up quite magically, despite static class sizes.
On the other end, you’re dealing with anxious “customers”, or disgruntled ones if they don’t get their “ticket”.
So - yes, it’s a mostly thankless, pressure-cooker job.
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Exactly. And a low paying job to start as well…high $30’s to low 40’s generally (can be a bit higher in large expensive cities). I’m not saying there aren’t highly capable AOs/Enrollment peeps but at that starting salary range, the industry is not attracting the cream of the graduating crop.
I agree that many colleges have done many things to increase apps, and if the AO staff can’t handle the volume I don’t understand why they don’t hire more external readers at $20-$25 an hour (the going rate). If an external reader reads 8-12 apps per hour, the average app fee easily pays for the external reader. There’s some cost to training the readers, but that wouldn’t change the math all that much.
I also agree that the VPs are often the scapegoat for when things don’t go well…and much of the priorities and policies are driven by the President and Trustees.
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The problem is that the USNWR and other rankings reward colleges for having low admittance rates, which, by themselves, tell us nothing about the quality of the education provided or even the caliber of students enrolled.
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Which is a reflection of what the readers want: These rankings wouldn’t exist, but for many parents equating rejection rates and SAT/ACT averages with prestige, and seeing prestige/brand recognition as an important selection criteria.
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USNWR rankings, by far the most important rankings (sadly), DO NOT consider acceptance rate in their ranking methodology.
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Similar to corporate America, the people who formulate the policies and determine the practices are not the people who are required to enact the policies and practices, nor are they the people who end up paying the price when these go bad.
The people who are required to go through the applications are not the administrators who decide that junk mail and spam are the best way to achieve institutional goals. There are likely a dean or two who did that, as well as marketing team. I would be surprised if these people even solicited feedback from AOs, much less took the feedback into consideration.
The colleges probably blew all their money on fancy flyers, and didn’t have enough left over to hire more AOs…
“Hey Tim, just a heads up, you’ll probably get twice as many applications this year - we really advertised aggressively. By the way, we have rejected your request to hire two more readers. After spending $5,000,000 on designing, printing, and send those flyers we don’t have any more money in our budget. We also put out some TV ads - did you see our Superbowl ad? Genius, right? Only $10,000,000, so a bargain! See if you can sucker some more alumni into helping you look over those applications.”
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The surprising part, for me, was that the college mentioned is not a Big Name. Augustana (College in IL, not to be confused with the University in SD) seems to produce some academically solid results, and one of the schools that I’d argue is punching above its weight with respect to producing alums who end up getting a doctorate (source). It received 6,640 applications and has a 69% acceptance rate with a 14% yield (source). That seems a far cry from U. of Chicago (of which I’ve heard about aggressive marketing campaigns) that accepted 6% of the 37,974 applications it received with an 83% yied.
I would have thought that a school that seems to look for reasons to accept a student (rather than reject a student) might not need to spend as much time on each application. It appears that Augustana has 20 people working in its admissions office (source). For U. of Chicago, I couldn’t find a listing of admissions staff, and the directory required a U. of Chicago login (source).
Do people think that U. of Chicago might have 120 people working in its admissions office? Which factors do you think might lead to the most stress: 1) needing to whittle down to a very rejective acceptance rate, 2) dealing with a low yield rate, or 3) something else?
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If that were actually true, then what is the point in paying a marketing firm to send email blasts to students who are not a target demographic of a university’s admissions office, as several colleges (not all) do?
From the time my D23 submitted a first LOCI after EA deferral to her 2nd LOCI after being waitlisted, the AO for our region at one university was no longer there. No communication anywhere to let anyone in the process know. I wondered about burnout.
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It is true, and I gave you the link with the current USNWR methodology that clearly shows acceptance rate is not a factor.
There are many reasons for a university doing marketing…increase apps (doesn’t matter that acceptance rate is not a part of USNWR methodology), increase brand awareness, reach out to students that meet the school’s institutional priorities, etc. Some admin personnel are also incented (via bonuses) to increase apps…as digitaldad said, admissions jobs are sales and marketing jobs.
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It’s not just admissions officers either. Post-covid, higher ed is losing staff and faculty in mind-boggling numbers. The local university near where we live lost over 70 percent of its advising staff in 2021/2022. I hear that they are having a hard time finding and keeping replacements–either people won’t even apply to a position that pays 40K per year or they take it but quickly move on not long after starting when they realize that housing in the area costs more than half of their salary. They are losing faculty not only to other universities but to remote corporate jobs as well (I can think of 3 English professors I know from the same university who all took jobs doing something English-adjacent for big banks or EdTech companies within this past academic year). From the perspective of someone working within higher ed, I can tell you that there is too much institutional knowledge being lost with all of this turnover, and the ones who are staying are so burned out and looking to get out. It’s hard to imagine the quality of student services being maintained right now…I do hope something shifts soon. The incredibly low pay for the higher ed admin staff who are doing the bulk of the work compared to the upper admin making 6 figures is one thing that needs to be addressed asap.
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Yes, acceptance rate is not a factor for USNWR - but it is a factor for many students and families. A low acceptance rate school looks exclusive, sought-after, and therefore “must be very good”.
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Definitely…the proverbial popularity contest.
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UC Admissions staff are listed on this page, scroll down for two lists: US and International. There’s overlap in both, so I didn’t carefully count. Maybe 40-45ish unique names?
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On the other hand, some colleges now have more paid staff than students… What services and staffing levels are actually necessary?
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Oh there are definitely lots of schools who could stand to trim positions. Higher ed loves to create upper level management positions while cutting faculty lines, which then feeds down to new positions created to assist those new positions…when in reality it’s the student-facing roles that are doing the impactful work. I have watched this play out so many times…random management-level positions created at the same time faculty lines and advising positions are cut.
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This is exactly correct. The scarcity mindset that drives highly rejective schools’ marketing strategies directly leads to outcomes reflected in the methodology. It’s like an undercurrent of the rankings- not absent, just not obvious/direct.
I am in no way suggesting that there is anything wrong with this. I just don’t believe that it leads to measures of a quality education that are meaningful for the student experience or even the graduate experience.
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To be fair though, USNWR did use acceptance rate for many years, until, I think, 2019. By the time they stopped doing that, the horse was well out of the barn. I believe they were the ones who started the whole obsession with acceptance rate.
Here’s a WaPo article from 2018, if anyone can access. I can’t access it either, but I certainly recall this happening not long ago.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/09/12/us-news-changed-way-it-ranks-colleges-its-still-ridiculous/
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