Welcome to the new year!
The start of school is always
so exciting. For families and for the
whole community but I would suggest especially for those of us staffing the
admissions office at our schools. Our
work from the last 12 months is literally walking through the front door. These new students are beaming with pride, proudly
sporting our uniforms or maybe a school hoodie they grabbed in our
bookstore. They are anxious and nervous
and hopeful and excited. And so are
their parents!
They walk through those doors
for the first time with grand plans of what they will accomplish, excited by
dreams and goals they will chase. You
scan their faces in the opening assembly, remembering when you interviewed them
in your office, or maybe half way around the world. You remember the endless questions and emails
from their parents. You remember the
discussions and debates of the Admissions Committee. But that’s all behind you now. They are here and you are here and it is the
start of school. Welcome to the new
year.
And then you do what you
rarely allow yourself the time to do: you remind yourself—just quietly and just
to yourself—that you have changed the trajectory of every kid’s life anxiously
sitting in that room listening to new student orientation. Because of you, they now have immeasurable
opportunities found in your school’s programs, offerings, facilities and
campus. They have teachers and
administrators who will put them at the center of their lives and challenge,
encourage, support and mentor them. They
have peers and classmates who share their academic drive, their commitment to success
and accomplishment, and their seriousness of purpose.
In the truest sense of the
overused word, what you have done is awesome.
And it doesn’t stop
there. Any school—actually, every
school—is shaped by the students who attend it.
The culture, the tenor, the ethos, the character of the place comes from
the kids. You may have an amazing campus
and a dedicated faculty and a strategic thinking administration but all of that
is for naught if you don’t have the right kids.
You’re the one who recruits and admits and enrolls those kids. And the school moves in the direction of
those students and with their boundless momentum. Your kids.
The ones who are there because of you.
Before you reset the admissions cycle and your spreadsheets back to zero
and launch a new season, stop and take a look around. Take pride in your work, in your kids. It will affect the school for generations to
come.
You change the lives of
children and you shape the future of schools.
You are awesome. You are an
admissions professional. Welcome to the
new year.
