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.