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.