Long-Term Investment

We are to the point whereby the sound of airplane wheels touching down on terra firma is almost drown out by the deafening sound of Blackberries, iPhones, and Androids, etc. simultaneously clicking on and the rings, chirps and bells of missed texts, calls, and emails filling the cabin. How can we have gone so long (even on the ½ hour USAirways Shuttle flight from Reagan to LaGuardia!) without contact, without being in the know? We must catch up immediately—we must know what we have missed!

The 21st Century has ushered in an era of constant contact and immediate gratification, and the demand for convenience and speed has never been greater. Do any of the following sound familiar to you? Or about you?! You find it unreasonable that it takes the microwave 3-5 minutes to accomplish certain things. You can’t believe how endless is the wait in the Starbuck’s drive-thru lane. You think downloading a full-length feature movie from iTunes is simply exhausting. And let’s not even get started that FedEx can’t promise anything earlier than 8am the next morning to rural Africa!

That’s our life, right? The “new reality”. We adapt. What’s the big deal? Well, the potential big deal is an article from last week’s New York Times sent to me by Kristin Dabney (whose daughters attend James River Day School), in which the chairman of the economics department at Brigham Young University proclaims the price tag of elite education a long-term investment. His study—and the related newspaper article—is focused on elite higher education but I don’t think it’s a stretch to extrapolate that to elite independent school education.

His study makes the case for paying for just such an elite education (future earnings, graduate school admissions, etc.) but he does specify that families must be willing to think this way and to see the future benefit and payoff from today’s investment in tuition. Are we in the same boat? Not entirely. I think that some benefits of an independent school education are more immediate, more obvious, and more measurable. TABS has done an excellent job of providing proof points for boarding schools and NAIS to a lesser degree for the larger industry.

But what about YOUR school? Once a family wraps their head around paying independent school tuition, what proof points can you offer from your own school that are evidence of long-term payoffs for the investment as well as feed the beast that is parental immediate gratification? What is your school’s evidence?

Don’t leave the beast hungry, as it won’t wait long before it goes down the road to another school for what it needs. It is, after all, in a hurry.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!

A Charlie Brown Christmas was on television last week: what a classic! In watching it one can’t help but remember their childhood, the many times they have seen it over the years. In watching it, I started to wonder if such a show would ever be created today. What are the chances as we creep up on 2011 that a modern children’s holiday special would be so overtly Christmas-y as to feature a scene with a child reciting from the Gospel of St. Luke?

But please don’t stop reading—I promise this isn’t a post about political correctness! It’s about being true to who you are. Without sounding judgmental, I imagine any newly created holiday special would include a carefully crafted balance of gender, race and religion, maybe finding a uniting thread across the folds as the theme of the show. This is all good...in theory.

But in doing so, don’t they risk losing any meaningful message, becoming nothing to anyone by endeavoring to be something to everyone?

And there is the risk to our schools and our offices, particularly in difficult times. When we stretch our definition of who we are and whom we serve we run that same risk of becoming nothing to anyone. When we relax (which is just a nice word for “compromise”) our admissions standards and criteria, we risk diluting our institutions. We dilute our professionalism and credibility. And we fail to serve school, student or self.

Today on Morning Joe, it was asked of Congressman Zach Wamp (R-TN) what marked a quality legislator during these difficult times. “Consistency” was his answer. The mark of a congressman (or that of an admissions director) was being consistent in your convictions even during the difficult times, even when faced with challenges. As adults we know the difficulties and challenges will come to pass. They always do.

How we managed them—and ourselves—will be our legacy.

$300 Wine

The families who pay the full tuition at our schools make up the wealthiest citizens. NAIS places them around the top 3% income earners in the country. While they have also had their share of impact from the current economic crisis, it is relative. So if they still have the money, then how has the economy impacted their thinking, their choices?

I have had the opportunity in the last couple of weeks to speak with some very wealthy folks. We’ve discussed how spending and decision-making has changed. In a word: value. They still have the money to spend and they are still willing to spend it but they are more thoughtful about their choices. What can they get for their dollars? Like before, they are willing to drop $300 on a bottle of wine at dinner. The difference? They now want to spend $300 on a bottle that is actually worth $400. An article in the recent Conde Nast Traveller magazine mirrored this mindset. This demographic is still willing to pay $800 per night at a resort but now they want daily complimentary breakfast, pick-up from the airport, and a spa credit. Now they want value.

When families look at our schools, they assume certain things. They imagine good teachers and superior academics. Right? When were you last asked about the hiring process for teachers or about their professional development? They expect we are thoughtful in our hiring and in our admissions. They assume cutting-edge technology, the safety of their child, and a commitment to excellence. And before they were willing if not happy to pay for that.

But where is the value we can offer now? What can we offer that is not found at other schools…or at least at other schools they may typically consider? What value can we offer so they feel as they are getting a $60,000 experience and education for their child while only paying $45,000? These folks didn’t become the country’s top earners without being smart and savvy.

It may be exhausting if not annoying (or insulting or frustrating...) to think we need to find something to offer more than an excellent education for their child that sets them up for life but if we want to have the edge in challenging economic times with these important families who pay full tuition we better figure out what value we offer.

Four Diamonds

You pull up to the TABS hotel and you’re not too impressed. Walk into the lobby and still not impressed. The wait to check-in? Not impressive. (Although the desk clerk who checked me in was most impressive! Give credit where credit is due.) But while you wait to check-in you see a AAA Four Diamond plaque on the wall. “Okay,” you think to yourself, “things must be much better up in my room if this place has four diamonds. This is, after all, just the lobby.” Well, your thinking would be wrong.

And this got me to wondering about what AAA was thinking and what little it must take to get four diamonds these days. But then that got me thinking about our schools. When we say we have great (aka "four diamond") teachers, what does that mean? What are our proof points? How do we define great? More importantly, when we say we have great teachers, how do our prospective families define great and what expectations have we established for them? We better be on or get on the same hymn sheet as our prospective families, maybe even after getting them to realign their definition of great with ours.

After all, if you get to define great for them in a way that is uniquely your school, then you have set a near impossible standard for other schools they are considering to meet. Game over.

So it seems to me that if you want to be successful, you need to differentiate yourself as well as establish some high, seemingly four diamond-esque, standards you think are uniquely yours and can be claimed by no other. And then get families to buy into that. Did you get all that?

And, oh yeah, unlike the TABS hotel, you have to be able to deliver on it.


Personal Indulgence (since it is my blog!): two pieces of exciting news this week. First, congratulations to Joe Hanrahan for being named the next head at Marianapolis. I had the incredible pleasure of working with his wife and to know them and their lovely family. They will rock that school and it will be much better for their arrival. Good luck!

And congratulations to Lynne Hay, retiring after 25 years in the Admissions Office at the Episcopal Academy (PA). She is returning to the classroom and by doing so has robbed our profession of one of its most senior, thoughtful, ethical members. Lynne is the kind of colleague I wrote about on Thanksgiving. It’s our tremendous loss not to see her again at the likes of SSATB, TABS, Essex, etc.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy (American) Thanksgiving to everyone.

This marks my 20th year working in admissions and as I think about all for which I have to be thankful, being able to do this work that influences if not changes the lives of children and shapes institutions in which I believe is really quite awesome, in the truest sense of the word. (Awesome: top of the list of abused and overused words such that their original meaning is now diminished if not lost! Unique is probably second.)

And this profession would not be such a rewarding pleasure without the incredible colleagues with which I share it. Some of my admissions colleagues have become some of my closest friends. I feel privileged to share their profession and their lives. They work tirelessly on behalf of what is best for students and schools and do so with honour, integrity and character. I have learned so much from so many who have insight, creativity, thoughtfulness, intelligence, and compassion.

I wish everyone a refreshing, renewing, relaxing and reflective Thanksgiving, and I thank everyone for the manifold ways in which you shape and better my life, professionally and personally.

Like Attracts Like

I’m in South Africa visiting one of my dearest friends. He is just one of the “good guys”. I’ve seen him leap from his airplane seat to take the arm of elderly passenger and help her navigate herself to the lavatory and I’ve seen him bound across the street to open a door for someone whose arms were full of packages, bags, and dry cleaning. He’s that person who maintains a meticulous list of everyone’s birthday and phones them with best wishes. His gmail and Skype contact lists are bigger than my inquiry pool! He befriends everyone he meets.

So it should come as no surprise that when I met some of his friends at a dinner tonight, they seemed likewise. Like attracts like, right? And this got me to thinking about the power of branding and how its power should be equally strong at attracting the right students and dissuading the “wrong” ones. If our messages are authentic and clear, then the right students will be engaged while the wrong ones will further their search elsewhere. And that’s okay. In the end, we want appropriate applicants, not all applicants, right?

(Or do we? On a related, interesting note, check out this New York Times article on the explosion of college applications sent to me by Kristin Dabney, whose daughters attend James River Day School in Virginia.)

I was recently looking at the new website for Shimer College, the Great Books college in Chicago and noted I could enjoy their viewbook online (someday a whole other blog post on whether or not sharing your viewbook online is a good idea—I’m not convinced). Upon first inspection, one thinks this book is the antithesis of what the marketing people have been telling us what to do with our print materials. There’s way too much text, not enough or big enough pictures, and too much reading to trudge through. Who is going to bother??

Students who are excited about going to a Great Books institution. That’s who. If you’re not interested in reading the viewbook for Shimer, than you’re surely not interested in the curriculum for Shimer, or any other Great Books college. I’m not sure if this was done on purpose or not, but posting their viewbook online may be the first step in Shimer’s inquiry qualification process.

If so, bravo Shimer!

Horn Talk

I write this from Lagos, Nigeria, where the traffic appears utterly insane, relegating rush hour in NYC or LA to the category of “civilized”. There really are no lanes, the number of cars that can fit alongside one another is defined solely by the trenches and drop-offs paralleling the road. Motorcycles zip in and among cars and taxis, and everybody seems to be driving without any acknowledgment that other cars, lots of other cars actually!, share the road with them.

But as you chew on the unavoidable exhaust and pay closer attention, you come to appreciate a semblance of organization that is executed by horns. People don’t lay on them as they do in North America. They’re not horns of anger or rage. Different numbers and durations of horn blasts seem to indicate different things and as cars move in and among each other in tight proximity (so close that anyone who can, folds in their side view mirrors) and without benefit of defined lanes, it seems to work. The horns actually tame the wild beast that is the traffic. A colleague on this trip, Harry Lynch, the headmaster at Newman School in Boston, has named this “Horn Talk”.

When you enter a different land (and I mean that literally or metaphorically when maybe a single-sex day school visits a co-ed feeder school), it helps to know the language. Actually, it serves you well to know the language. Visiting Nigeria, a former British colony, I had to be conversant about GCSE’s and A- and O-level examinations. If you visit a Montessori school it would be good to articulate the five categories of learning. And if you want to recruit from a Sacred Heart school, you’ll go a lot farther knowing about the “goals and criteria” that manifest their values and education. Honor and respect them by taking the time to speak their language first before you expect them to speak yours.

It’s easy to think that if “they want to come to my school, they need to speak my language” but if you’re in admissions, it’s more important you speak theirs first. If you’re successful, the result will be that they then want to speak yours. HONK!

Ted Sorensen, R.I.P.

Last night Ted Sorensen died. He was the author of the famous line uttered by John F. Kennedy, …ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. Those of us in our positions can easily start to feel as though our whole school communities are exclaiming to us, “Ask not what we can do for you. Ask what you can do for us!” But, at the end of the day, are we not in our position—even drawn to our position—from a place of wanting to do for our schools and for our students?

I think the most successful among us are so due in part to a core belief in the institutions and/or students we serve. I suppose one can work in the business office or on the grounds crew or, dare I say, even teach in a classroom—and possibly do so quite well—without believing in them. They tend to their small part of the operation with not much investment in the greater mission or effort. But we can’t do that. We have to believe in the institutions we serve in order to be both happy and successful and we have to believe in our students.

On this Feast of All Saints, maybe it would behoove us to pause and remember those who have gone before us, who have served, encouraged and lifted us in our personal and professional lives. Family, friends, mentors, professors, colleagues: although some may be gone, all had a hand in defining our life’s course. They served us in order that we might serve others. Ask what you can do…

Kennedy also said, Things do not happen. Things are made to happen. In the name of our students and our schools and those who came before us, what will you make happen today in their service?

It's only $25,000.

It was 2006. I was in Singapore for less than 48 hours as part of a post-doc graduation trip to Africa. The idea of living in Canada had never occurred to me and I certainly didn’t have a Canadian American Express Platinum Card at the time. This is what I explained to “Steven” today when it was discovered that my card had been compromised and that $25,000 had been charged to it from a PayPal account in Singapore. “It’s only $25,000,” he noted casually.

I have to say that Steven at Amex was pretty nonplussed about the whole ordeal, especially given that it was Amex and not me who was going to have to fork over, or try and recover $25,000. They canceled my card number and are sending me a new one in 7-10 business days. In the meantime they will open an investigation and be in touch. Steven clearly did not share my alarm, concern, sense of urgency or righteous indignation. He managed it all with Canadian grace and calmness. It may be my only Canadian credit card but to Steven it may have been the 5th, 20th, or 50th time today he’s dealt with such an issue.

This got me thinking about applicant parents. We have hundreds of them a year. If we’re lucky, we have more than we have spaces. But, like my Canadian Amex card, they have only one child in the application process (usually). I would imagine if we are not careful or thoughtful that we, too, can come off as dismissive, nonchalant, reserved…dare I say, Canadian. We have seen it all and it takes a lot to get us riled up. We don’t share their anxiety.

I had dinner last week with one of the “big name” consultants who told me of calling two of the tenschools.org admissions offices to get an appointment for her client. One immediately told her what time and date was available. A chilly reception to say the least. The other asked if she knew what date would work best for her client. Now, this was better. Needless to say, she has a very different impression of these two schools’ admissions offices right now. So does her client.

When we (or our staff) pick up the phone or click open an email, are we Steven from Amex or are we who we used to be when we first got into this business? Unless we are yielding 100% of our offers of admission, never dip into our wait pool, and our classes reflect the perfect balance, diversity, mix, gender ratio, financial profile, and make-up our schools desire, maybe we need to remember that for each parent on the other end, they have only one child, no matter how many applicants we may have on our end. A little compassion wouldn’t kill us…and it’d go a long way.

Compassion: don’t leave home without it.

The Blind Side

First, if you haven’t seen The Blind Side, shame on you. Second, if you haven’t seen The Blind Side, shame on you. Go. Now. Buy it. Don’t even rent it. You’ll want to buy it after you’ve seen it so just buy it first. Trust me. I’ve bought maybe six movies in my life. This is one of them.

I was talking about this movie last weekend in San Francisco with some admissions friends, one of whom said how much they liked it because it showed what an independent school and a deliberative admissions office can do for a student, how we have the power to alter a student’s life’s trajectory with the swoosh of our signature on an offer of admission.

To me, I had seen the movie as about what “a fine Christian woman” (as Big Mike’s mother calls Leanne) can do when she exercises and lives out her faith. How embarrassing I never saw the role of the school or the admissions office. This came home to me last week when I was interviewing assistant director candidates (between trips to/from Europe and California!) and asking them about a professional point of pride, and one said to me, “every graduation.” She went on to talk about how she liked to remember each graduate as they were when they interviewed and reflect on how the school—starting with the admissions office—has changed, shaped, and directed their life.

When your head is unreasonable, your flight delayed, the tour guide hasn’t shown up, your interview hours late (or early!), the placement director not returning your call, or your feet tired from standing behind a table nobody has approached, then just stop. Pause. Breathe deep. Think about Big Mike. And be proud.

Q&A

You’ve been there. I’ve been there. In the folding chair. On the stage. In front of an auditorium full of anxious parents and students, on the edge of their seats. You are the guest of a feeder school who has asked you to join a panel. It’s fun. It’s Admissions 101. You’re actually encouraged NOT to talk about your own school. You’re just there to help, to give advice, to answer questions, to represent “our people”. It’s a rush, isn’t it?

I’ve been thinking about this since the Globe & Mail’s “Thought Du Jour” (there’s that French Canadian thing) earlier this week.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian Nobel Laureate (1911-2006)

When you’re on the stage, what’s your sage advice? Mine has always been to focus on the interview. It is the one thing in their complete control. It’s real time, it’s raw, it’s live. Their grades and test scores are a record of their past. Even their essay is now gone and history. They have no control over what will be said on their recommendation. But they own the interview. I tell them that their questions are actually as important as their answers. (You should know if they have soccer before you get to the interview! Ask instead how many graduating seniors on the team.) I advise them that what they ask of us is as indicative of their character as their answers to our questions.

For the first time, however, I’ve been giving thought to the reverse. (I was reading on the plane!) Maybe shame on me. In the era of consumerism when it comes to prep school “shopping” and in our effort to attract our best possible applicants (“Even Harvard loses out to Yale sometimes,” I’ve told many a Board), maybe they’re thinking the same. Maybe they are as interested in our questions as they are our answers.

What is the goal of the interview: to judge, to probe, to inquire, to recruit, to discern, to uncover, to cultivate? What is our desired outcome? How do our questions and our answers get us there? What do they say about our schools? What do they say about us?

Anyone have a favourite interview question? Please post in the comments.

Facebook=Viewbook?

I admit it. I buckled under to peer pressure. About a year ago, I joined Facebook. Moving twice in less than a year can be unsettling and the need to feel connected surely drove my decision into the world of social media. Now I don’t go around collecting friends or posting my every move but I have been “found” by those from my past and I’ve made some wonderful reconnections since going online.

A downside, however, is that I’m actually less in touch with a few friends. I have a couple friends who now limit their communication with the world to posting on Facebook and responding to the comments therein. We don’t talk much anymore and we don’t exchange emails. I don’t like this one bit.

But this got me to thinking about how our offices use Facebook. It came to pass that traditional, stand-alone viewbooks were seen as obsolete. How can one medium convey all the targeted and differentiated messages we believe to be important? How can one book speak to both student and parent, to both Lower School and Upper School?

Have we gone and turned our viewbooks into Facebook accounts? Do we have just one Facebook account and expect that our posts (we call them posts, right?) will serve all the diverse needs of our prospective students and parents equally, speak to all their interests equally? The answer? As usual, I don’t know. Maybe our offices need one Facebook presence for parents and another for students.

But if we’re treating all our “friends” on Facebook the same by posting undifferentiated and untargeted content then doesn’t Facebook=Viewbook? Same mistake. Different medium.

People People Deux

First, great to see everyone last week! There’s never enough time to connect and re-connect, is there? Thus, People People Deux. Here’s my tale. I was to join three colleagues for dinner on Friday. My flight back to SSAT was delayed to the point that I had to miss dinner.

So I returned to the Intercontinental Hotel (a hotel with an uncommon blend of excellence and mediocrity) and sent them all an email of apology and explanation. Well, their night was equally long and they didn’t return to the hotel until about midnight, after walking 15 minutes in the rain due to the absence of taxis. And it was at that time that independently each of them responded to my email. What were they doing? Why were they reading emails at midnight? I say this with as much self-curiosity as anything else, as I would have done the same thing.

Other than admissions, nothing bound them. 1 day; 2 boarding. 1 man; 2 women. 1 married; 1 divorced; 1 single. Their ages and tenures in admissions span decades. Why are so many of us like this and do such things? I say this with the hopes that my headmaster never stumbles upon my blog and reads this but I don’t think it’s a work ethic thing. I think it’s a People People thing. We want to know while we were away from email if anyone “reached out and touched us” (thank you AT&T). And we want to acknowledge (if not secretly reward and encourage) that communication by responding, and by responding on purpose at midnight.

Does anyone else in our school keep such hours and do such things? It’s not the job because certainly the head, dean of students, business manager, etc. all have demanding jobs and responsibilities. If it was the job or the position, our entire admin teams would be online at midnight doing this. It’s something that is inherently admissions-y or at least inherent in those drawn to our profession.

While I don’t think it’s a point of pride that we are all like this, I certainly do give thanks for my friends on the other end of the Blackberry. Travel safe everyone.

People People

Writing from SSATB and thinking about all that we’re being asked to do that is “virtual” and “online”. Even the Admissions Leadership Council (which you heard me speak of at today’s luncheon if you’re here in Boston) was debating meeting just once a year, and conducting the rest of our business through tweets, wiki, email, etc. Does anyone else believe this to be counter to the nature of your average admissions director?

We’re “people people”. While it may be exhausting or even frustrating at times, I think most of us would choose standing behind a table at a fair engaging a family in conversation over sitting behind a desk responding to emails. So how do we balance our innate “people-ness” with the manifold growing demands of web-based marketing, online applications, databases, social media and evolving technology? (If your office doesn’t have at least one iPad at this point, you can count yourself behind the curve!)

Fortunately for me, I had the opportunity to hire for it. I’ve got a young, bright, hard-working new staffer who loves all of this. She still needs guidance with messaging, brand and content, but how it gets into the virtual world and into the email inboxes of the right people is entirely on her. As for me, I had to go to the Tech Help Desk last week for assistance to change the batteries in my wireless keyboard.

It makes me wonder if the generation of admissions directors to follow is going to be required to have college degrees somehow related to technology. Has even the admissions profession gotten to the point whereby us liberal artists are no longer welcome? Will the new generation ever go out and meet people and engage them? Will future headmasters when hiring care if their admissions directors are personable, can look you in the eye, have a firm handshake, manage a decent outfit from out of a suitcase or even…gasp…tie a bowtie?

You can want 92...

In speaking with a colleague from another school last week, he was regaling me with the fact that his Board set an enrollment goal that would have required 92 new students this year, even though the highest they had ever enrolled in one year was 80 new students. And that was in a good economy. 92 is a 15% increase from the best record ever. Well...you can want 92 but you aren't getting 92. Now, as you read this, I am sure your blood is coming to a slow simmer with ill thoughts towards this Headmaster and Board. But I would challenge you to turn inward to yourself or at least to our profession. Whom do we allow to set enrollment expectations?

Whether or not you like Southwest Airlines (hello Shannon in Row 6), there is no question as to their success. And how are they successful? They brilliantly manage passenger expectations. We promise you no assigned seats. You get none. We show you no movies. You watch none. We offer you a rewards programme but you'll never get enough points to fly to Paris. I know that. Most everyone who buys a ticket on Southwest has a very clear expectation of what they will and will not get--and Southwest consistently delivers on that expectation, and is therefore one of the most financially successful airlines.

So, how astute are we at educating our Boards and Headmasters about total enrollment versus new student enrollment expectations? We are our school's "chief enrollment officer" and need to take the lead on the differentiation. If not us, then who? The formula shouldn't and can't read: Enrollment Goal - Returning Students = New Student Enrollment Goal. It must instead read,

New Student Enrollment Goal + Returning Students = Enrollment Goal.

But we aren't going to be credible in making this pitch if we don't use historical and data-driven predictions and recommendations, and mitigate those recommendations with current environmental factors such as competition, economy, and demographics. Do you know your five year average attrition and new enrollment rates by tuition? By grade? By gender? By boarding versus day? By domestic versus international? It takes a lot of time and can be built in Excel but the result is a fascinating and fantastic tool to begin the prediction of enrollment for next year if not the next five years. Play with it. Let your Headmaster, admin team and/or Board see how today’s first grade enrollment unveils sixth grade in five years.

Who is setting up the expectations for new student enrollment at your school? At the end of the flight...err day, it is still you who has to manage those expectations. You might want to fasten your seatbelt, stow your tray table, and put your seat in the upright position, and pay attention. If you want to be a Southwest Airlines-caliber admissions professional, then you need to first manage and then subsequently deliver on expectations.

(Un)Happy Labor Day

It wasn’t my intention to start the new school year with a negative post but I spent part of my holiday (Labor Day (aka Labour Day) is the only shared federal holiday between Canada and the U.S.) catching up on some reading, both paper and electronic. In doing so, I came across two short articles that got my attention—and not in a good way. The first from the Wall Street Journal is about a former admissions director who is now making money running a NYC service that helps children prep for the “playdate” common in elementary admissions processes. This article will have to sit with me for a bit although my initial impression is that I’m sad that our industry has driven families to such desperate measures and I’m a bit offended that a former admissions professional has decided to exploit this situation into personal profit, no doubt prostituting her former admissions experience as validity for her expertise and cost. Notice that no sitting admissions directors were quoted in the article.

The second article was sent by a friend asking what I thought as an admissions professional about an Episcopal/Anglican school that reversed its offer of admission upon realizing the applicant’s parents were both women. I had to first decide if I had to get over my embarrassment as a lifelong Anglican or as a 20-year admissions professional. But in the end, to answer my friend’s inquiry, this is the foundation of being an independent school. We are obligated to clearly articulate our programme, whom it best serves, and apply our criteria consistently, transparently, and fairly. This school’s values are obviously such that it can sustain enrolment and remain open not wanting to serve children of same-sex parents. Of course, I think I might feel better about St. Vincent’s if the article noted the school was equally diligent in following Biblical standards by asking prospective employees and donors about their use of contraception, receipt of the sacraments, not doing work on Sunday or expecting others (e.g. store employees, restaurant waiters, etc.) to do so, etc. Picking and choosing what to follow or enforce is neither professionally consistent nor particularly Christian.

Your School...in 500 words.

It’s the time of year when admissions directors are hounded by any form of media where their school is represented to update their stats, university/college lists, and data. It’s a tiresome job but a necessary evil. What showed in my inbox recently, however, was the opportunity to join a new site but they wanted pictures and a 500 word description immediately. (I’m talkin’ to you, John Williamson!)

Well, this was an unexpected hassle as when I looked on my computer I found I had only 50, 100, and 350 word descriptions. This isn’t always the easiest of tasks. You need to cover the basics but the basics can sound so much like every other school. The goal is to differentiate but not at the expense of essential information…and all in 50, 100 or 500 words.

As I considered this new hassle of a task, I heard in the back of my head the voice of a dear friend to many of us. Holly Treat, of Camille M. Bertram Educational Consultants, wrote a great blog entry this spring questioning the methodology of school rankings and the boiling down of great institutions into quantifiable data, and admonished us that, “To do so would be to quantify an experience.” Thanks for the important reminder, Holly. We do indeed offer more than can be said in 500 words.

(NOTE: I have added the Bertram Blog, "From the Quad," to the column on the right of this blog. It’s worth a review.)

Mission

Mission: whatever. Does your school have one? Does it include any of the following words: diversity, whole child, prepare, global, serve, preparation, community, life-long, or excellence? Don't they all? It's the rare school that has a profound mission but they are far and few between. Any great examples anyone? Your own school? But even the solid ones do us in admissions what good? When was the last time you were asked about your mission or to name your mission in a conversation with a parent or applicant? It's about so much more than that. Our work is about the importance of family/school long-term relationships, multi-year investments, and the education of children. It's not about pizza or cars or jeans, people. All that is done in our schools everyday cannot be boiled down to a sentence. And it shouldn't be. Mission: whatever. Snore.

Enjoy the following video. It's entertaining. But at the end of the day, I don't think it's for us.

Print versus Electronic

It’s not quite as contentious as diversity but print versus electronic is up there among professional hot topics for me. Being rather traditionalist, I sometimes worry that my own bias holds back my office’s full embracing of electronic marketing. But see what the Wall Street Journal wrote on the topic last year as it relates to getting catalogs in the mail. Interesting stuff.

In this article, I think the key line for me is, Catalogs, marketers say, drive sales at Web sites, making them more important than ever. (Of course, when I read “catalogs,” I see “viewbooks”! ) I think that’s the balance. Tease them with paper. Drive them to electronic. Wow them on the web. In leadership and management courses they teach us it is better to replace one thing for another than to simply pile onto the workforce more that needs to be done. In this case, unfortunately, I don’t think we’re there yet to replace paper with a screen so we must live with being piled on with more to do.

My favorite writer on all things related to education marketing, Andrea Jarrell (a link to whose blog, “School of Thought,” you will find in the right-hand column; feel free to suggest other blogs you like), weighs in on this here. She maddeningly provides no answers but plenty of food for thought. Making you think is among the things she does best. Enjoy her writing. She's stunning in many ways.

At the end of the day, I still think there’s a balance. After all, look at what we’ve learned about how the brain works in the last two decades and how that impacts classroom teaching and assessment and pedagogy. Doesn’t this extend to a diversity of ways in which families take in information and learn about schools? Why would we limit ourselves to a debate of print OR electronic? Doesn’t having a quality presence in both media give us greater market penetration?

From Canada, I wish you all a “Happy Civic Day” this coming Monday.

The Nouveau Minority

Thanks to Pam McKenna at Hopkins School for bringing this article to my attention regarding the proven struggles of poor, white students in education. Upon reflection, it makes sense. Schools make great efforts to recruit faculty of color. We want students of different races to find mentors and role models among our adults. Schools in the last decade have become increasingly sensitive to avoiding tests and major assignments on a variety of religions’ holidays and observances. And we’re all quick to enjoy the efforts of the International Student Club on days such as Chinese New Year. But where is the support for students who quietly and internally gasp in embarrassment when everyone is asked to bring in "just $15" so the whole team can have matching tshirts? And forget the optional trip to France over spring break. Where are the adults and teachers who publicly exclaim their own childhood poverty and struggles so these students know someone who has walked their same path? Schools commit great dollars to financial aid but then what do we do to support this “minority” in our midst (NAIS says this group makes up only 18.7% of our students)? Is it any different than 20 years ago when we started to recruit students of color but then expected them to act, assimilate and survive in an almost entirely white school culture and environment? Look how far we have come from that ignorant stance. What might it look like for poor, white students 20 years from now when our industry is more enlightened and decides this is the new struggling minority that needs our attention and effort?

Race & Social Media

Race: always a tricky topic, isn’t it? Check out this article regarding the races and social media. In summary: the Caucasian population can typically be found on Facebook while the Hispanic and African-American communities tend toward MySpace. A lot of questions surfaced for me when I heard about this on the radio and then subsequently discovered this article. What does this mean for schools who want to be harnessing the power of social media? Should we have a presence in both places? Does anyone right now—and if so, why? And now knowing the dominant audiences found at each website, do we tailor our messages accordingly and differently? Is that a form of racism? Or is it segmented marketing, the same thing we do when we craft different messages to parents versus students, or Lower School candidates versus Upper School candidates? Discuss! (FYI: An insightful study worth reading on the topic of race in independent schools was turned into the book, Blacks in the White Establishment.)

Passports.

This news of the increasing costs of passports brought to mind an admissions director quagmire that's haunted me most my career. Where is the balance between going yourself (whether it's a day school visiting a local feeder school or a boarding school visiting someone on the other side of the world) and sending a staffer? How is it received by those you visit if you send someone other than the #1 person in your office? Isn't relationship building key in our business? How do you do that if you don't send the same person each time? I mean really: can anyone do as good a job as you? Does sending someone else out take control out of your hands? On the other hand, don't you have better things, more senior administrative things to do than spend days or weeks out of the office? Thoughts?

Read On.

What's worth reading in our industry? I hired someone last year with zero admissions experience and he was looking for books to read to learn more. I had a few on my shelf to loan him, although mostly from the higher education perspective. If someone had a similar request of you, what is on your bookshelf that you would recommend? I started with these two:

1. The Gatekeepers. You'll quickly find yourself invested in the lives of these students and in the admissions office. It was hard to put down!

2. Questions and Admissions. There is nothing Fetter doesn't share, down to the color of the markers used in the folder reading process. A most interesting read, from the complex to the minuscule.

P.S. Happy Canada Day everyone!

Thank you.

Building a team on our campuses is so important to the work we do. Lord knows we can't do it alone. We need our administrative colleagues, the Faculty, and the behind-the-scenes folks all on board with our admissions work. That all-important "first impression" cliche. Who has a unique way to say thank you? Who has a way that's not hard on the budget? At Ridley College this year, we gave out Tim Horton (Canada's Dunkin Donuts) cards to our members of the Lower School Faculty and just the other day I hosted the dozen member team from facilities and grounds in my backyard at school for a summer lunch of ribs, corn, potato salad, homemade lemonade, and cookies. The groceries for the whole lunch (include paper plates, napkins, etc.) came to $241. In my mind, that's money well spent. See the smiling and appreciative faces for yourself.

SEO

SEO=Search Engine Optimization. I get the concept although I can't say I know how to execute it. Does anyone think they do this well? Who does it? Admissions? Tech dept.? As an exercise, I typed "private schools new england" in Google and the top results were various associations of New England schools but right there on the first page of returned results was Groton School and Berkshire School. Of the 100's of schools in New England, how do they land at the top? What are they doing right?