A Year Later

A year ago this week, I ran off my plane in Hartford, rode impatiently on the bus to the Hertz lot, and drove slightly more than 55mph to the Apple store at the Holyoke Mall in Massachusetts. I bought my first iPad. (At that point, we didn’t have them in Canada yet.) With the help of my school tech guys on the phone and the Apple folks in the store, we got it up and running and then downloaded some Ridley photos and video. Next stop: Eaglebrook Fair!

For the first time ever (and most likely last!), I was cool, hip, tech-savvy and cutting edge. Mine was the only iPad in the whole room. Students flocked to my table to play with the iPad. They were utterly fascinated as many had not yet seen one. They had only just come out. But more so than the students, the other admissions directors were spellbound. It took me half an hour to get out of the fair before everyone who wanted to had seen the iPad and how I was using it. It was fun to talk with colleagues about its potential and the strategy my office had for it.

Fast forward to this past week and Eaglebrook 2011. There was a…um….herd? flock? murder? gaggle?...of iPads at the fair. My moment of coolness and being cutting edge was very clearly in the past. Oh well. I took home leftover materials; my table was not so popular, so cool.

Now not that I can take credit for the iPad movement but I am happy to have shared my iPad with colleagues during and after last year’s fair. I think we need to do more of this. I find a disturbing trend towards hyper-competition. If we remember our work is to serve students and schools then we should be willing to help each other out since by doing so we’re helping students and schools.

After eleven years at Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia, I was still the new kid on the block when I left. Admissions directors in the Philadelphia market measure their tenures in decades, not years. The result was a group of seasoned professionals and close colleagues who’d been around long enough to have seen it all. Little rattled this group. You win some. You lose some. Life goes on. I miss that level of support, encouragement and mutual respect. That level of professionalism.

By helping and encouraging one another (or at least not purposely getting in the way!), we elevate the standards of our profession, serve the schools we claim to love, and help students end up in the environment and programme that best suits them.

If that isn’t what it is all about, then I don’t know.

Bulletin Boards

I’m in the middle of redesigning and launching a new website at my school. But isn’t everyone? If you’re not, then it means you’ve probably just done so in the last 48 months. It’s incredibly time consuming and made even more so by the number of other voices that get to weigh in on the look, content, navigation, and photos. I could write about the perils of websites or viewbooks designed by committee but there’s not enough alcohol on this plane to get me through it.

Instead, I find myself putting school websites into the same category as bulletin boards (and, accordingly, dating myself). If you’re an admissions director reading this and are breaking out in a sweat over the haunting memory of bulletin boards, then you were watching “Friends” when each Thursday the show had a new episode, not now when you can see repeats ten times a day across three different channels. I remember a time in my career when “bulletin board memo to faculty” was on the checklist before every open house.

Bulletin boards—like websites—are great ideas…at first. Teachers, coaches, activity leaders all are excited about sharing what they are doing, bragging about the accomplishments of their students, and letting their not insignificant egos become manifest on cork. What background paper will go on the bulletin board and where’s a stapler when you need one once you’ve picked out your border? There’s label making and headings and titles to be printed out and put up.

Fast forward to June. The background paper is torn and full of staple holes, the pretty border is wilted and flopping down, and the only thing left on the board is what hasn’t miraculous fallen down since September. All the enthusiasm and plans and energy and joy around the bulletin board quickly fell to the side back in the fall as students returned to school and the year got under way. Then multiply this by how many bulletin boards your school had/has.

So, as we design this new website and as expected, I hear from those enthusiastic colleagues around campus who have great plans and want to make sure they get a “button” on the website and not one of those lousy, buried L4 buttons. Their program should link right off the homepage. What’s ironic is they don’t share my skepticism (and certainly not my righteous indignation) when I point out the fact that on our current website their section hasn’t been updated since October…October 2009!

So beware your website doesn’t become a 21st century bulletin board. And just like those Greeks and their gifts, beware teachers and coaches bearing enthusiasm and promises.

...shall much be required.

A dear friend’s son is blessed to be both an incredible scholar and an incredible musician. Accordingly, he was looking for that rare combination of a superior conservatory and scholarly academics. This is not common. Most conservatories focus on music, to the ignorance of scholarship and most the top academic colleges in the country do not offer conservatories worthy of his talents. So they had to do some research and uncover the appropriate but short list of options.

They were kind to bring me along the journey with regular updates of campus visits, family conversations, and new discoveries. What I learned through this journey is that the world of auditioning for conservatories has its own set of admissions standards and practices.

For example, none of these institutions will divulge how many spaces they may have for trumpets, as an example. They will happily cash your application fee check and let you go to the expense of coming out for the audition, but feel no obligation to let the 150 applicants know there are only two trumpet spots this year.

My friend’s son, however, was talented and smart enough that it didn’t matter. He got a number of offers of admission, including to his first choice. You can imagine the excitement in the household. All those years of practicing and lessons and music camps (say nothing of miles logged in the car by mom and dad to get to all these places!) finally paid off.

But wait.

Here is something else the conservatories don’t tell you or share in their materials or on their websites: financial aid is allocated relative to the institution’s needs, not that of the family. So if you play a popular instrument, like the piano, then your kid is a dime a dozen. You fill out all your paperwork and blindly apply for the assistance your family’s finances indicate you need only to find out what you need is not a consideration. They’ll happily pony up some aid to meet their own needs but if they think your kid can be replaced with a rich kid, then it’s buh-bye.

There’s an ethical irony here insofar that if you are one of these elite conservatories with excellent academics who churn out the next first chair of the Boston Pops, then I suppose you can do as you like, as your wait pool will always be deep and your applications many. On the other hand, if you are top dog in your profession or your peer group or your industry, are you not obligated to set the standard higher, not obligated to be above such things?

So we’ll close with a little scripture this Sunday morning for your consideration and the consideration of conservatory admissions offices: For everyone to whom much is given, of him shall much be required.

iAdmissions

The newest edition of Fortune magazine lists the world’s most admired companies. The top four, in order, are Apple, Google, Berkshire Hathaway and Southwest Airlines (see a related post from 2010 here). Not particularly surprising to see them all at the top of the list. They are certainly leaders in innovation, thinking and profit-making in their respective industries.

As discussed on Morning Joe last week with Fortune’s editor-in-chief, the other attribute these companies share is founders and/or CEOs who are tremendous risk takers. They are all out-of-the-box thinkers and willing to throw caution to the wind in pursuit of their vision. They perceive the future in a way the rest of us are desperate to grasp.

Doesn’t sound like our industry, does it? Prep schools are not really risk-taking places and with few exceptions, there aren’t many schools that could literally afford to accept risky behavior from their admissions director. But our work has evolved in so many ways and there are certainly some industry leaders. I would imagine the names coming into your head right now are the names of which I’m thinking, too.

Somebody had to be the first to try having a school website, the first to see the future of Facebook and create a school page, the first to harness Skype to conduct an interview, the first to take an iPad to a fair, the first to create a school app.

And we haven’t lacked for out-of-the-box thinking either. Concepts like enrollment management, net tuition revenue, and geodemographics have all been introduced to our industry since I joined it. Remember when we had more financial aid than demand? Someone had to first think how best to maximize it and spread the wealth when we started to finally run short (due to our own fault as tuition increases outpaced cost of living increases for over a decade).

What’s next? I can assure you I haven’t a clue. But it’s inspiring to be in the game and see the big thinkers wrestle with how we make our offices and our schools more successful, more efficient, and more committed to serving students. It’s exciting to consider how we stay current, relevant, and at the front of the pack.

My guess is it’ll be somehow associated with an Apple product. iAdmissions? It beats boarding-licious!

A Case Study

Have you been following this great tale of mission, honor and integrity? In short, BYU basketball has been successful in ways never seen before at BYU. Historical success one might say. They recently reached their highest ranking in 23 years.

But its star center broke the BYU honor code by having premarital sex with his girlfriend and when he willingly confessed to the athletic director and his coach, they turned him in. The university suspended him from the team for the balance of the season while they determine if he will be allowed to even remain a student. And the team has subsequently suffered…greatly.

The response? Impressive. The player, the teammates, the coach and the athletic director are all supporting the university’s decision. More than supporting it, they are defending it. And they are all supporting the player. The honor code is clear and any student who enrolled there did so willingly agreeing to it. And when the suspension is over, coach and teammates alike have publicly stated they will welcome the player back.

Isn’t it suppose to be this way? This whole thing could be a case study. School has transparent mission and expectations. Admissions articulates them clearly and with pride. Students and parents choose to embrace them and enroll. Students, as they are want to do, make mistakes. School responds in line with who they say they are. Everyone is in agreement. Student learns a lesson.

I wish I lived in Utah. I’m inclined to buy BYU season tickets right now.

Picnic, anyone?

It’s been a tough few days. I discovered an applicant family was being dishonest and unethical in their dealings with various admissions offices, essentially trying to pit one against another. It’s always sad when this happens, particularly when seemingly decent kids become the victims of unfortunate adult behavior. It is the topic of another post for sure but at some point we have to consider what it is about the prep school admissions process that leads parents to make these poor choices.

What was affirming in the midst of all this, however, was the collegial relationship amongst the admissions directors involved. One had a suspicion and contacted another in a non-accusing way to make an inquiry. That colleague responded not the least bit offended. A third was brought into the conversation. Together we compared notes and collectively understood what had happened. Together we allowed our personal and institutional relationships to overcome and rise above the immediacy of the situation. We all knew applicants come and go, and that the bonds between colleagues had to endure beyond them.

Recently on the plane (shocking, I know) I was reading an article about the psychology of mobs, like the ones at an English football game, whose rush to the sidelines have crushed others to death. The author was comparing human behavior to that of ants, noting that people are individualistic but that ants are profoundly social. We work to our own best interest; ants employ a collective intelligence.

Thank goodness our profession is essentially one of ants, that we have the ability to work collectively and beyond our individual (or institutional) needs. We’re in it for more than that. We’re in it for the social good. It makes me proud. See you at the next picnic.

Cube-a-licious

I was visiting friends in Tampa when we drove by an office furniture store and the big poster on the side of the building said their office furniture was cube-a-licious. Okay, that nailed my funny bone. And to their credit, I have—on and off—thought of them numerous times in the last six weeks. Cube-a-licious. teehee That’s clever!

Then last week while in Africa, I was traveling with a colleague from another Canadian boarding school I hadn’t seen since we were both on tour in China back in the fall. Although she’s never been to my school she told me it stuck in her head after she overheard me tell a kid that skeet shooting was one of our 70+ activities. That simple fact has kept Ridley in the forefront of her mind.

Skeet shooting and cube-a-licious: interesting what rattles around in one’s head. When our schools share more in common than they don’t, it seems rather important to find something that’s uniquely yours. Maybe it’s a tagline/motto or an uncommon activity or something else. But whatever it might be, it seems it’s important that it’s memorable.

After all, doesn’t everyone remember “Where’s the beef?” or “Just Do It.” or “Got Milk?”?

And don’t try and beat me to it—as soon as I post this, I’m filing trademark papers for “boarding-licious™”!