Admissions Officer Advice: Decoding College Admissions

Webinar Transcription

2024-04-10 – Admissions Officer Advice: Decoding College Admissions

Anna: Hello, everyone. Welcome. Good evening. Good afternoon. Good morning, wherever you’re joining us from. We’re so happy you’re here. Welcome to, “Admissions Officer Advice: Decoding College Admissions.” My name is Anna Vande Velde, and I’ll be your moderator today. I’m a Senior Advisor at CollegeAdvisor. Just a little bit about my background.

I’ve been with the company for about two and a half years, and in addition to advising students, I’m a proud co captain of our essay review team. I studied psychology at Carnegie Mellon, thought I would end up a clinical psychologist, but after working a few years, ended up at Harvard Law School, and I graduated from there a couple years ago.

So in addition to the work I love doing for CollegeAdvisor, I’m also a non profit defense attorney, and I recently moved to Ottawa, Canada. That’s more than you need to know about me, but they did ask me to share a little background. To orient everyone with the webinar timing, we’re going to start off with a presentation, then we’ll answer your questions in a live Q& A.

On the sidebar, you can download our slides, and you can start submitting questions in the Q& A tab. So please don’t feel like you need to hold them until the end. Submit them as we go and then we’ll get to as many of them as we can after the presentation. Without further ado, I’m thrilled to turn it over to our panelist tonight, Stacy Tuttle.

Stacey: Thanks. I always love presenting with you, Anna. You have such a great background and such a diverse skill set. So, um, I am excited to have your expertise on the moderation side of things as we Go through this really exciting presentation. It’s one of my favorites. So I’m Stacey Tuttle. I am currently working with CollegeAdvisor as a former admissions officer a little bit about my background.

I went to Yale University for my undergraduate career, where I also majored in psychology with a focus in neuroscience. I did focus on work in private industry for a time after I graduated before getting my masters of public health and returning to support. Surprise, yell, um, to work at their school of medicine and then at their school of public health, um, where I actually gained a lot of my admissions experience directly.

I’m still there today as the director of student affairs and registrar. And then I’m really excited to share my insight as a former admissions officer with you all today.

Anna: Awesome. Thank you, Stacey. I love moderating when you’re here. You have so much expertise. Uh, before we get to your presentation though, I’d love to get a sense of who’s with us right now. So if you could please fill out this poll to let us know what grade you’re in. If you’re here as a parent, teacher, support person, please select other.

While those responses are coming in, Stacey, I was wondering, did you get to experience any part of the eclipse this week?

Stacey: Oh, good question. I did. I actually, I was one of those people who kind of went into the eclipse day, not really knowing. I, I may be, I might be, you know, cursed for blasphemy and saying this, but I didn’t really understand why it was such a big deal.

And then I started the day up hearing how rare this was. And, um, I ran home to, um, watch it with my husband. Some neighbors had glasses so that we didn’t blind ourselves. And we actually did get, because we’re in Connecticut, um, it was a little cloudy, but we were able to see it, um, which is great. I know some folks who were.

In the line of totality. So they were able to have a pretty amazing experience. What about you?

Anna: Yeah. So we have 99 percent coverage here. Um, and what was cool was that in 2017, whenever the last one was in the U S we traveled and saw the a hundred percent, it was a really interesting comparison and it showed me just how strong our sun is because the 1% It still was not dark out. So really cool.

Stacey: Yeah. Yeah, I it was definitely And experience. And, you know, one day I hope to have maybe in, what is it? 40 years, the complete experience. But, uh, I know I’ve now understood that there are eclipse, you know, chasers who run around the world following these events and that’s pretty cool.

Anna: It’s very cool. I think we’ve given everyone enough time to respond. So we have an 8th grader here and then we’re split pretty evenly with around 40 percent 10th percent 11th grade. So with that, I’m going to turn it over to you, Stacey, for your presentation.

Stacey: Great. Okay. So to get started, what do admissions officers do and what are the key factors that they base their decisions on? So admissions officers have the very difficult job of selecting candidates for their institution’s community.

Um, the, the student population that they hope to represent their school during their undergraduate years and beyond. Right. It’s. It’s not an easy task. Um, something all of my colleagues take very seriously. Um, and so there’s a number of factors that we need to consider during that decision making process.

Um, it’s both an art and a science in many ways. And so I’ve categorized those factors here. I’ll elaborate more on the slides, but the first category is university needs. So every university is a little bit different. Um, and they all have needs that drive them as an institution. They have requirements that they need to meet goals that they set that they’d like to achieve.

And in order to achieve those goals, part of that is aiming for a certain set of goals or demographics for their admitted student class. And so I’ll talk about a little bit more on the next slide, elaborate that in more detail. So the next category is something that you’re all most familiar with. And.

The part that you have the most control over which is your applicant profile and that is quite literally the application you’re putting forth, right? What is the story you are telling to admissions officers given all of your application pieces? That includes things like your high school where you went to high school.

Um, Your demographic data, your academic background, the transcripts that you’re submitting, the classes that you’ve taken, how rigorous were the classes that you take, what test scores have you submitted, and what did those look like? How does that compare to our average admitted student? How does that compare to the students that are on our campus now?

Um, your academic focus, what major or department are you most interested in, or have you articulated as your major of choice should you come to our school? Um, how, Focused. Are you when it comes to that major department? Are you pursuing extracurriculars related to that major department? Are you telling us in your essays relevant experiences as it relates to that major department?

Do you have strengths on your academic transcript and test scores in areas that make sense for you in terms of pursuing that major department? There’s also individual qualities. We’re gonna look for from you and these really come through Your essays, but also your letters of recommendation. What are people saying about you?

And what are you saying about yourself? How are you characterizing yourself in terms of your top qualities? Are you a leader? Are you resilient? Are you a team player? Do you feel Joy and being organized or working with people. And what are your passions in relation to those qualities? How are your qualities aligning with what you hope to do both academically and professionally one day?

So these are all things we’re reading into when we review your application and Not by far the, um, anything to sleep on here. It’s one of the most important parts of the read is the fit you have with the school in question. So the school is going to try to understand, given everything you’re putting forth, can we actually meet the needs that you’re articulating as a student, a potential student on our campus?

Do we have the resources, the major, the faculty, the student life, student groups, um, centers? Research opportunities, whatever that looks like. Do we have the things that you need to achieve your goals? Have you done that research appropriately? Did you choose us? as the right fit for you, right? And we also want to see what you’ll bring to campus in a positive way.

Can you add value to the campus in a meaningful way? So, again, a lot of things that we’re going to be reading into in your applicant profile, things that you will put forth and have more control over versus something like university needs. And then finally, what you’re going to see, um, At the end of this admissions decision making process are a set of applicant ratings.

And so this is there’s a lot of subject subjectivity to the admissions read of an application. Um, that’s just the nature of the process since we’re human and we are subjective in many ways when we’re reading an application. So, in order to. put a science type framework around the process. Um, most admissions teams will have ratings that they use in different categories, different areas, and assign quite literally numeric values, um, to different categories, areas of your application in order to assess your application in comparison to others in the pool, um, and ultimately make that final admissions decision.

And I will talk about that more towards the end of the presentation. So let’s talk about that first category in more detail, University Needs. Um, the first thing that, uh, we can consider in this category is departmental needs. So this is, um, when I say department, I mean, you know, a major choice, an area, a department related to an academic focus, right, at an institution.

Each department is going to be different. Also, within the university, in terms of their needs, each department is going to have a different set of resources, a different number of faculty, um, quite literally a different number of seats in their classrooms that they have available for students. And as a result, their numbers will be set from year to year accordingly, right?

They will admit a certain number of students based on. how many number of students they need to fit those seats, how many faculty advisors they have, how many, what that faculty to student ratio optimally would look like for them. Those numbers are set internally by the university and by the departments.

And they might change from year to year. So one department might not be admitting 50 students consistently every single year, but rather maybe one year it’s a 70 person class. And then the following year, maybe it’s a 40 person class. So it’s not the same number every single year. Okay. And even further within the department, um, in terms of their numerical goals, matching those resources, the faculty and such are their demographic goals.

They might want to shrink demographics in one area and, um, expand it in another. And so those, those factors are something that, um, admissions officers do need to consider when making those decisions. If they have a certain number of engineering majors, And they only have so many seats for engineering majors of the applicant or the admitted class, excuse me.

They’re not going to be able to admit all of the engineering majors. They are going to have to make some hard decisions in that admissions process in order to not oversubscribe that department, um, in the incoming class. Another factor to consider within university needs are the relationships that the university has, um, with other schools and third party programs.

So one example I like to give is when I was in high school, my high school had a relationship with a local university and that university would quite quite literally come to campus, um, my high school campus, that is, and they would interview students on the spot and admit them on the spot if the interview went well.

So they clearly had a Um, a partnership with the high school and likely many other local high schools as well in order to create these pipeline programs for local students to come to their university. Um, and so that’s one localized example, but these relationships can exist on the national and even international level.

Um, there’s also third party programs. The most popular example you would see of this is something like QuestBridge. So QuestBridge is a program that, um, focuses on high achieving, uh, under resourced, low income students, um, in order to give them scholar, increased scholarship opportunity to top tier schools.

And that’s a very, um, particular program. Many top tier Ivy League universities have relationships with QuestBridge in order to give students that opportunity. And you can imagine that they have a certain number of seats set aside in the incoming class given that, that relationship. So another category to consider under university needs would be geographic representation.

What I mean by this is many schools will have enrollment caps on in state versus out of state students. So this is most relevant to state schools. As you can imagine, you might have heard, you know, it might be harder to get into a University of California, of California school if you’re not in California.

State schools are very transparent about these caps. They’re, they’re Typically, um, data statistics that you can find online where they’ll say a certain number of students of their incoming class are in state versus out of state. And this is because a lot, um, a lot of times they’re funding sources. They have funding sources that are tied to local resources.

And so those local funding sources as a part of that funding process will require that students locally are given opportunity to attend that school. And so that’s something that. You’ll see quite commonly in terms of university priorities. And then finally finances. This is of course a big factor for any institution, um, but it, it means different things at different institutions depending on, um, whether they are tuition dependent or not.

So tuition dependency is a real need to some schools rely on their tuition numbers to keep them in business and running accordingly. And so that’s something that institutions need to consider is of, you know, the income in class, how much money are we getting from tuition? Um, and as a result of that, some institutions might be need blind or need aware.

So need blind means that during the admissions decision process at the final decision making stage, they are not considering a financial aid profile of a student in making their final decision. But in the case of a need aware school, um, they might Take into consideration financial aid, um, needs of a student in making that final decision.

And so what I am seeing here is not that need aware schools are quite, um, literally necessarily going into applicant pools and trying to find the students who are least financially needy and only admitting those students. That’s not what I’m saying. Instead, what, what you’ll see is that students who are need aware, um, will, um, Go through the application review process.

Get to the final stage of decision making and all things being equal, you know, to students perhaps have very Equivalent qualities. They both do very well on campus. They may consider financial need at that stage Before admitting a student because they understand that if even if they admitted the student with the higher financial need They might not be able to come because their institution can’t meet that financial need And therefore the student would not be able to afford to come that directly impacts yields Um, so yield is of the admitted students of a class of all of those admitted You The number of students who actually come to a school.

All schools want to aim for high yield because that means their admissions rates can be lower. They’re getting almost, let’s say you get almost 100 percent of your admitted class matriculating, then you don’t need to admit as many students in order to get the yield that you need of that admitted class.

Um, and so these are factors that universities are constantly considering, and as a result, a need aware school might admit a student who is less financially needy, all things being equal, knowing that that student is more likely to matriculate and come to the school or yield. Um, and so this might particularly impact, uh, students who have international student status because those students tend to have less financial resources available to them versus domestic students.

Um, and so international students should be aware that this is something, um, that some universities will need to consider.

Applicant profile. So this is that second category from the first slide. This is the part, like I said, that you can control the most. Um, The first area of the applicant profile that will be considered is the demographic variables presented to the admissions officer. That said, the weight of demographic variables and the admissions review process varies from institution to institution.

For some institutions, that’s going to be an important factor. They want to make sure that they’re hitting certain demographic goals. And then also, um, the recent Supreme Court ruling has directly impacted the ability to consider race and ethnicity in the admissions decision making process. Um, in prior years, affirmative action was very important and popular, um, in admissions decision making because it helped admissions officers to, um, ensure that underrepresented Students from underrepresented groups were given an increased chance of admission in order to ensure, um, not only equity and access to that institution, but also diversity on their campus.

And so there were multiple, you know, reasons why that was valuable. Now, you can no longer consider race or ethnicity in the decision making process. And so schools have had to revisit. their procedures in order to ensure that they are compliant. That said, the Supreme Court ruling hasn’t said anything about gender as it relates to the decision making process, so gender could still be considered as a demographic variable should a school want to, um, balance the gender of their student population in one direction or the other.

Um, the next category in the applicant profile that an admissions officer typically reviews is the academic profile of the student. So your high school will be different from another student’s high school from another student’s high school from another student’s high school. So your high school, most admissions officers will have some kind of rating related to the high school you attended.

And this gives them a sense. You know, in terms of high or low, how that high school was resourced, what opportunities were available to you as a student versus a student who maybe went to a more well resourced high school or less resourced high school than you. So that rating helps them calibrate, um, where, where you come from in terms of your high school.

And then the rigor of the curriculum is something that they’ll look at as well. So of the courses and resources available to you at that high school. Did you take AP courses if they were available to you? Did you take IB courses if they were available? Did you dually enroll in college courses if that was an opportunity?

And how did you balance the rigor of the curriculum against all of your other competing factors, right? Did you take extracurriculars on as well? How is your GPA given the rigor of the classes that you’ve taken? And what was your rank? If that was applicable. So academics have a lot of moving parts to consider.

Um, there’s also standardized test scores. Now, many schools were test optional in recent years, especially since the pandemic. Um, and in fact, I think that was when test optional first became really a thing, um, for many institutions. So what does test optional really mean? Students are very skeptical when they talk to me about this.

Is a school really test optional? If I’m not submitting my test, does that look poorly, um, in my application process? The answer I have for students is no, it does not. Um, what will happen is if you don’t submit a test score to a test optional school, is all of the other components of your application are weighed that much more heavily because of that missing component.

So in some cases, a test score, submitting a test score might be Benefit you because it could demonstrate that you are strong academically in certain areas as demonstrated by the standardized test for some students that doesn’t necessarily show it to their benefit because maybe the test scores that they received were not as strong.

Makes you an educated applicant is if you of the schools that you’re deciding to apply to, you look to see what their average test scores were of the recent admitted classes. Ask yourself if you fall around the average or in the range, if they provide ranges of test scores between like the 25th and 75th percentile, you want to fall in the average range of the admitted the average admitted student or the average matriculated student, the average incoming student at that school.

If you’re not following in the average range, then I would say it would benefit you to potentially not, um, submit your test score because it. perhaps doesn’t align with the academic profile they’re hoping for from an admitted student or they’re expecting from a student that they would want to be successful on their campus.

So, um, if you’re falling below the average test score of their students, it’s definitely something that you can consider is just not submitting that test. Um, that said, there are a lot of schools that are moving back to test required. Yale University. Being one of them. So if you are preparing in the near future for an application to college, I would strongly suggest that you start studying and test prepping because we just don’t know how many schools will eventually move back in the test required direction.

And so test optional may not be around forever. Um, the other component of the applicant profile that’s really important in the review is the major department that you’re choosing. I mentioned earlier, it’s important that if you choose a major department, that other parts of your applicant profile align with that choice.

So if you’re pursuing all Um, STEM activities and you’re clearly pre med in terms of your course selections and your essays and your letters of recommendation. And then the major you choose is art history. You need to make a case to me as to why that’s the right major for you. That doesn’t align with any of the other application pieces.

So I would hope to see essays or other things on your applicant profile like extracurriculars that align with that major choice. Um, because that tells me that you’re making a mature and informed decision given your current passions and interests. I also want to see your major department of interest because it might be a very competitive major department of interest at my school.

And so, I mentioned engineering as an option earlier. I believe I mentioned engineering. Engineering is a capped, what they call a capped major at a lot of institutions. So they, they have a limit to the number of students they can admit to that major because of the high volume of applications to that major as well.

And so it’s helpful, again, to be an educated applicant and understand if you’re applying to an institution, are you applying to a very competitive major? And if you are, you need to put your best foot forward to make a case for that particular major. It’s also a valid strategy in some cases to apply to a less competitive major if you can easily switch into that major once you’re at the institution, even if you were admitted under a different major.

So definitely things to consider. So let’s talk about applicant ratings. I talked before about how this helps admissions officers apply a scientific framework to their subjective review process. So When I say applicant ratings, I quite literally mean a numeric rating on in many different categories during the review process.

This is going to look different from institution to institution from admissions committee to admissions committee. Um, everybody does it a little bit differently, but on average, this is going to be representative of the most common category rating categories that you’ll see. The first one, unequivocally will be an academic rating.

And so they’ll consider things like high school rating, which we talked about earlier, your test score, if you submit that, your class rank, the curriculum, you take an AP, IB, dual enrollment courses, all of those things will be taken into consideration when setting an academic rating. And for the sake of this example, let’s just say it’s on a scale of 0 to 10.

Um, that allows an admissions officer to internally calibrate. Okay, this student, um, I ranked highly academically because they had a strong test score, they had strong grades, they had a really high rank versus lower on the scale in comparison. Um, the next category That you’ll see in the ratings of that admissions officer performs, um, would be an activities rating.

So most schools will have this extracurricular evaluation. Um, and things that they consider in the rating include factors like the level of your performance. So. Did you achieve this activity at the local level, the regional level? Did you achieve it at the state level, national, international? The higher level of your performance, the more positive that’s typically evaluated.

They’re also looking to see what your level of participation was. So were you a team member? a team member? Were you a leader? Were you an officer? Um, did you spearhead a subcommittee? What did that look like for you? How involved were you in this activity? And how much time did you commit to that? Rarity is also something that they’ll consider.

So is this something that very few people will have Done or are listing this on their resume, is it very, um, unique to you or even further, is it a very competitive opportunity? And so therefore not a lot of people have gotten that opportunity. So rarity is definitely a positive thing and length of involve involvement, literally the length of time you’ve been committed to this activity.

That is usually looked upon favorably because it shows commitment and to that passion to the activity. I’m also I included a bullet here about passion projects. So developed by the applicant. I call these created opportunities. So in these scenarios with passion projects, typically, students have seen a need.

or a gap, or they want to provide a resource to the world that they feel would be helpful. And therefore they’re pursuing a project, um, a personal project that no one, it’s not already in existence and nobody is offering it to them, but rather they’re creating that opportunity on their own. So for example, um, I’ve had a student talk about jewelry making.

I’ve had a student talk about farming. And what that means to him. I’ve had a student talk about the podcast that they’ve created. And so these are all things they did not have to endeavor to do. It’s not something their high school provided to them. It’s not something a mentor provided to them. It’s something they endeavor to create on their own and give back to the world.

And it aligned directly with a passion. So what I will tell you is I think there’s a lot of pressure on students to do passion projects because they, it’s a, it’s a key phrase these days. It’s something that, um, people hear and they’re saying, Oh, I need to do that. Do not feel you need to do a passion project to be competitive in the admissions application process.

It’s okay to not have a passion project. Only pursue a passion project if you are truly passionate about it and it makes sense for you. Another rating category that you’ll typically see is It has a lot of names. So in this case, I called it personal or brand, narrative, the story you’re putting forth to admissions officers.

In my line of work, I called it a passion rating. So how passionate or focused you were, um, in, let’s just say public health. Um, that was a rating of, that comes through a read of who you are. What sparks you what brings you joy every day? And that’s usually demonstrated through your essays your activities and your letters of recommendation.

So this is an opportunity for you to put forth your um Your why you know, why are you applying to college? What are you hoping to do as a next step? And how does that relate to potential career goals or academic goals? goals that you have. Um, as part of that story, think about where you’ve also come from and what you learn and reflect on the things that make you, you, we talked a little bit about characteristics, personality characteristics, all of these things come into this personal brand type of rating.

The next category you’ll typically see is school fit or community, uh, a rating. Where we’re trying to assess. Did you do your research? Did you take that extra step to understand if my school actually can provide you with the things you need? Do we have majors you want to pursue? Do we have faculty doing work in areas you want to study?

Do we have student life that aligns with your needs and your interests? That having that understanding, um, will help. Elevate your application because it will show me that you’ve made an educated choice to apply to my institution. And if I omit you, you will likely come and be happy. And so that’s really important.

And then finally, there’s an overall rating where we bring it all together. That’s typically adding together all of the ratings or an average of all of the ratings. Um, and that gives us a sense of where you fall in relation to other applicants. So I just talked a little bit about fit. Let’s dive into that into a little bit more detail.

Um, so what we’re looking for students who will fit into our campus life and culture, and we’re also looking for people who will add value to the community we have. So, um, like I said, are you, do we have the resources that you need to achieve your goals and succeed? And then what, What qualities are you bringing forth to the community?

Are you going to be kind? Are you going to be compassionate? Are you going to be helpful? Are you going to want to engage in intellectual thinking? And ultimately, I like to use the metaphor of dating. It goes in both directions. We need to be a good fit for you just as much as you need to be a good fit for us, right?

We’re looking for things out of you that we hope to have in our admitted student class, but you also should be really critically looking at us as a school and saying, Will I be happy there? So does your major department selection match with what we have available? I mentioned that earlier. Can we meet your research needs?

Um, in those letters of recommendation, do your mentors or teachers talk about you in a way that, um, we’d want our students to be talked about? Are you resilient? Are you mature? Are you focused? Are you driven? Are you a leader? Um, in your essays, what drives you? Will my campus help you achieve your goals?

And in your activities? How will you contribute to student life? Um, how can I see you coming to campus and contributing in a meaningful way once you’re here? Okay, Anna over to you for the next poll.

Anna: Thank you. Sorry having to chew my mic um Yeah, so we’d love to hear from you and I do apologize because I did open this on accident for a hot second earlier But i’m going to reopen it. We’d love to hear where you are in the application process. So Um, how is it, Stacy do you see it?

Stacey: Um, yes I do. Okay, so if you, is it open now? I think it is. Cause it popped up in front of me.

Anna: Okay.

Stacey: I hope. Cause I’m not seeing any responses.

Stacey: Yeah, let me, let’s try this. If I answer it, let’s try to reopen it. Back to Q. Start pulling. I think I did it. I’ve had to do this a couple of times, you guys.

Anna: Technical difficulties. Thank you all for your patience.

Um, while you fill out that poll, Stacey, I was wondering if you could answer for us. Is there, knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently when you were applying to college? And what would you have done differently?

Stacey: Great question. I, I actually think it coincidentally fell into the right patterns when applying to college.

I don’t think I meant to do it though. So I think I would be a much more informed applicant now. Um, I ended up creating a balanced list, which is really valuable as you know. Um, by pure accident, I, you know, knew I would be interested in applying and getting into state, local schools, um, some other private local schools on my list.

I had the top IVs, a set of top IVs on my list, um, but not all of them, right? I didn’t expect to align with all of the IVs and so I chose the ones that made the most sense for me. And then I had some middle tier schools, which are no longer middle tier schools now. Um, you know, admissions rates have changed a lot.

But at the time, those for me were schools like Northeastern and Tufts. Um, I was really looking into the Boston area colleges. Those schools are definitely top 20 now, um, or very high up there in their admissions ratings. So Yeah, I’m really proud to say that I did fall into that. I think I would have put less pressure on myself to apply to prestigious schools and focus definitely more on programming major value, which is the number one advice that I give to new students who are still about the admissions rate number, you know, they want to get into a school that only admits 5 percent of students, but in reality You can have an Ivy League education at any institution.

It’s about the student and how resourceful you are and ensuring that you do your research. Like I said, making sure that wherever you go, they have the resources you need and you just have to take advantage of those. Um, somebody said to me the other day, we will admit you, you’re here at Yale, but you need to color in that picture of what it looks like for you to be at Yale.

We gave you the sheet. You have the pencils. Go at it.

Anna: I love that. I think it’s such good advice to look at not only the school’s ranking, but the ranking of the major you’re interested in. Um, because you’ll be surprised what schools pop up for top. psychology or whatever programs. And while they might not sound exciting and impressive to your peers, I promise you that grad schools and employers know what the top programs are in their field.

So really good advice. Are you able to see the results of the polls? I

Stacey: am. Okay, so I can read this up. So it looks like we have about 19 percent of students who haven’t started. Makes sense. We have 73 percent of students researching schools. This is the time to do that. Amazing. Um, we have 4 percent of students working on essays.

Good for you. Maybe sophomores, but probably juniors in the room. Excellent work. Um, I’m getting my application materials together. No one. And I’m almost done. 4 percent intriguing. At this stage. Um, maybe I accidentally responded to that in that way, but does that help?

Anna: Yes. That’s awesome. Thank you all for sharing. And I’m going to turn it back over to Stacey for more helpful information.

Stacey: Got it. Okay, so let’s talk about the holistic application review process. Um, you’re going to hear this phrase used a lot. The application review process for many, many, many institutions is, institutions is holistic in nature, meaning they review your application as a whole and then make a decision.

That said, academics realistically is usually the first cut. And so this is just the reality of the admissions decision making process. Schools, especially that receive a high volume of applications, need to figure out how to, um, narrow the pool in such a way that makes sense for them. And one way to do that is to ensure that they’re choosing students who can academically on their campus.

Um, and so they’re usually running algorithms that will Give them a sense of which of the applications that they’ve received have test scores in a certain range or GPAs in a certain range and therefore, um, will be likely to academically succeed on their campus. Every algorithm looks a little different.

Um, and I’m not saying you have to have the test score, the perfect score. I will tell you, I’ve had students with perfect test scores get into their. And not get into their top choices. And I’ve had students with nowhere near the average score not get into the, or sorry, it’s the opposite. They get into their top choice.

So you don’t have to have a perfect test score, but rather they’re looking for a range of possible test scores that a student can have in order Gauge, okay, you will likely do well. If we were to admit you, they want you to succeed. If you get to their campus. So after that first cut, the admissions officer is then reading your entire application.

It goes on to an admissions officer to review that information. And that includes your activities, your letters of recommendation and your essays. For me personally, this typically ended up being a review of the activities, then the essays, and then the letters. That was a personal preference. Everybody’s different.

And the admissions officer then makes a decision based on all of those components. So right, that first academic information is assessed, and then the rest of the pieces are read. Um, for you, the burden is painting a clear picture of who you are and the fit with the school. I cannot emphasize this enough.

Um, you want to make a very strong case, a focused, clear, and concise case for why, We are the right place for you for the next four years. And I will tell you in talking to my colleagues, every admissions officer goes into an application and they hope you’re going to be the one they hope that all the puzzle pieces are going to fit.

It is not unusual for an admissions officer to go to bat, if you will, for a student that they really, really like, um, in front of an admissions committee to make a case for them. And. That’s I mean, there are humans behind these applications, and we know that, um, and we get to know you and we really learn about you and dive into your stories.

And so, um, we do want to see. As many of you as possible on our campus, it’s not always realistic, but it is really great when it’s a clear fit. So the stages of the process I mentioned earlier about this academic cut off. That’s usually the 1st stage in the review. The 2nd stage is this admissions officer review process.

Every institution is a little different in terms of how they handle. the actual reading of the application. For the sake of this example, I’m going to say that there’s going to be two admissions readers, is what you would say, admissions officer readers who um, are actually reading this application at the second stage.

And so these two people, it could be three, four, five, right? But in this case, it’s two. They’ll provide ratings according to the ratings we talked about earlier and comments or documentation that support those ratings. Those ratings would then drive for them their ultimate decision as an individual reader, whether that be denial, admit, or waitlist.

The other reader in the scenario will do the same thing. And then the combination of their two decisions will result in automatic denial, automatic admit, or an application that needs further discussion in most cases. So let’s just say one admissions officer reads and decides definite admit. The other admissions officer reads and they decide definite admit.

That’s typically an automatic admit case because two people agreed of the people who are reading. There’s no need to go on to committee for that. Similarly, two denies. Typically an automatic denial just does not go on to committee review, but if you have a discrepancy in the decisions, admit and waitlist or waitlist and deny or admit and deny that will typically go on for committee review.

Again, this is typically what I’ve seen, but not every admissions team will do this in the exact same way. Some will send all decisions on for final committee review, even if it means it’s an automatic admit or an automatic deny, um, just to ensure they have that committee review step. So at the committee review step for those decisions that are discrepant, um, They will assess as a committee, and it’s usually a combination of staff and faculty leadership in the departments that are making these decisions, who, and potentially deans as well, who will make the final decision of deny, admit, or waitlist of those discrepant decisions.

So in terms of the science, I talked a little bit earlier about this, you know, enrollment management process where we’re trying to understand, you know, uh, the students were admitting who is most likely to yield. or of the admitted students who’s most likely to come to our school. Enrollment management, every school, every school, regardless of how you cut it is using some kind of enrollment and management process.

And that could involve data crunching or algorithmic, um, decision making processes. This helps schools ensure that they are meeting their goals, their goals for the incoming class and their yields. And also all of those goals that we talked about earlier, the university needs that they have. This also ensures that.

Admissions officers are making timely decisions in their review process. You know, they have a lot of applications, um, this enrollment management procedure, having some kind of science to it, allows them to do it in an organized and timely fashion. And usually at the beginning, that’s, um, the academic profile assessment.

At the end, there’s this predictive modeling component where they try to assess. Okay, these are the students we’re going to admit. What does yield look like given those student profiles? And if the yield isn’t looking like what they want it to look like, they might go back to their decisions and make. Um, different decisions in order to get the yield that they’re hoping for now, from your perspective, you don’t have control over some of the factors that drive decisions like university needs, but you do have control over your applicant profile.

And so the burden is on you to understand what an admitted student class looks like to these institutions. What are the resources, the student profile, the values that they have as a school and aligning your application. accordingly.

So how can I develop an application that is authentic to me? Um, first and foremost, present yourself honestly. Do not embellish. It will be very obvious to admissions officers when you do, but don’t be afraid to talk about yourself, right? It’s not bragging. You’re going to talk about yourself, what’s important to you, and you don’t want to hide anything that could be important to admissions officers for them to know.

Um, and to that end, Write about what what ignites your passion. Your application will be stronger for it Do your research? Understand what’s important to the school. We’ve talked about this make sure it’s a good fit Take tours talk to students alumni admissions officers and probably most importantly ask for help Do not submit your application without one more pair of eyes on it.

Do not submit the application what I call cold um Work with as a CollegeAdvisor or maybe find help with your guidance counselor or a mentor you really trust to do a second read of your application and make sure that there’s kind of no outstanding questions that you could be Answering in terms of last insights as an applicant try not to obsess over the science that we’re talking about here again You do not have control over the university needs that drive some of these decision making Factors and so what you should focus on again is Finding the school that’s the right fit for you and articulating that fit through the applicant profile that you’re submitting to that school.

And again, being an informed applicant means doing your research about the institution and understanding what does your admitted student class look like? Do I match that? How can I improve my profile to match that? In terms of your applicant components, application components, excuse me. Do not collect extracurriculars.

Focus on the experiences that are important to you. So quality over quantity. Choose letters of recommendation that are meaningful for you. People who know you well and can speak to your qualities. Write essays about your passions. Balance your academics. So you can take rigorous courses, but make sure you can also maintain your GPA and pursue your extracurricular activities.

And I talked a moment ago about having a balanced college list. Um, don’t apply to all the Ivies. I mean, you can, but if you do make sure you have some target schools, schools that, um, match your profile a little bit more closely. And those, um, schools that are likely, the schools that you’re really likely to get into to balance that out.

All right. Anna, over to you.

Anna: Awesome. Thank you, Stacey. That was full of helpful information. This is the end of the presentation part of our webinar. We hope you found it helpful. Remember, you can download the slides Stacey created from the link in the handouts tab. And now we’re going to move on to the live Q& A.

So I’ve been reading through the questions you submitted, some when you registered, and some right now. Please keep those questions coming in the Q& A tab. We’ll get to as many as we can in our last bit of time together. Um, as a heads up, if your Q& A tab isn’t letting you submit questions, just double check that you joined the webinar through the custom link in your email and not from the webinar landing.

That said, Stacy, I think this first question is about extracurriculars. I think what they’re asking is, Is there a certain type that really will just like pop and give them like a nice spike in points, so to say? Um, like any must have kind of extracurricular or?

Stacey: Yeah, this is a, this is a tougher question.

I really appreciate the person asking this. So, a spike is typically something that, um, basically shows a theme, a common theme or thread in your application that’s really, really clear. It’s really salient when you’re reading an application, right? So let’s say, you know, you’re really interested in writing.

And so you really focus your efforts on right, getting things published and writing books, or you have a really notable, notable book. that you’ve committed a lot of time to, um, or you’ve, you know, submitted a lot of essays to local contests. You perhaps write for a magazine or created a magazine at your school.

You see how that kind of allows your activities to center around the spike or the theme of your application. And so what I will tell you is, um, every application is very, very different. And so if you start trying to put yourself into a box, um, you will be doing yourself a disservice. I think you should, rather than trying to fit into a certain narrative, really think about what’s important to you.

What do you love doing in your spare time? What do you And then also, are there skills that you hope to gain? Can you do that through your extracurriculars in high school? Which extracurriculars could help you further inform your interests in certain careers and academic paths? These are the things that you should be asking yourself.

You shouldn’t be worried about creating necessarily a spike in a certain area. If that happens organically through your journey. Excellent. Do it. Um, and I will say that a focused application in one You know, thread of an area is really nice to see because the narrative is very clear. It makes your application.

It’s one application strategy, right? Um, to make your application stronger and stand out. Um, that said, you can pursue things around the spike, right? You can pursue so many other things, um, in your spare time that don’t necessarily align with that central theme. Something you’ll hear also, you know, floated about is a personal brand.

And I talked about that earlier. It’s a very similar concept where you’re creating this brand for yourself. You’re putting yourself forward as a writer, a pre med student, a computer science, um, fanatic. And so it, it, it’s beneficial to have that narrative be very clear. But again, do not do so to the detriment of your journey.

Anna: Can you speak to the role of social media presence in the application process and how it all has evolved over time?

Stacey: Yeah, so the Internet is, of course, available at everyone’s fingertips, right? Um, every institution will leverage the Internet in different ways, and that includes social media profiles of potential students.

Um, there have, I have not personally been part of an admissions team that looks at social media for students before they admit a student, but it’s definitely a possibility. I will say with the high volume of applications we’re seeing. Seeing it’s becoming harder and harder to do those deep dives, um, That said, there might be a secondary, um, review of an incoming class by, uh, an admissions team after the admissions decision who are kind of monitoring the incoming students and making sure, you know, that they’re maintaining their grades, but also not creating a presence online that they would not want to have.

Of a student in the incoming class and they do have the ability to rescind that decision if anything comes to light that they do Not um feel aligns with their mission and values So it’s definitely you do not have to delete all of your social media accounts But you know, it’s important to put yourself forward in a professional and polished light when possible I wouldn’t, you know, stress that, you know, an admissions officer is looking through every part of your profile.

I, in most cases, that’s just not realistic, but I will tell you, you know, a quick internet search can tell you a lot about a person. Um, and it would potentially change a decision if there are negative articles or things of that nature about a person on the internet.

Anna: So you talked about the Supreme Court case decision. Is it okay to write about racial diversity, like in an essay or something?

Stacey: Yeah, that’s a great question. You should absolutely feel free to do that if that’s important to your story and your journey. Um, the question you’re going to ask yourself in writing that is, so what? That’s the question you’re going to always ask of yourself every time you write something in an essay.

I challenge you to ask that of yourself Every time you write a sentence, not even of the whole essay, but the sentence by sentence go around. Why are you writing that sentence? What are you trying to convey to admissions officers? And again, if you’re, there is an experience you’ve had, or the identity that you have is crucial to answering the question that’s been put forth.

Do not be afraid to talk about racism, ethnicity, in those essays, um, is in order to answer the question.

Anna: Completely agree. Uh, as a lawyer sign off. You can and should write about parts of your identity that are important for them to know. I’m going to give Stacey a second here to drink some water, uh, so I can talk a bit about college advising. So, for those in the room who are not already working with us, We know how overwhelming the admissions process can be.

Our team of over 300 former admissions officers and admissions experts are ready to help you and your family navigate the college admissions process in one on one advising sessions. We’ve already helped over 6,000 clients in their college journeys. I’m very excited to share we recently analyzed some of our data.

And from 2021 to 2023, we found that CollegeAdvisor students are 3.6 times more likely to get into Stanford, 4.1 times more likely to get into Vanderbilt, and 2.7 times more likely to get into Harvard. So, increase your odds, take the next step in the college admissions journey, and sign up for a free 45 to 60 minute strategy session with an admission specialist on our team.

You can do that by scanning the QR code. on the screen right now. And remember, you can download the slides and that QR code with you. During that 45 to 60 minute free strategy session, you’ll receive a preliminary assessment of your academic profile and some initial recommendations. At the end, you’ll also learn more about the premium packages we offer that pair you with an expert who can support you in building your college list, editing your essays, all the things we talked about tonight and more.

So we’re going to go back to the Q& A for the rest of our time, but that QR code’s going to stay on the screen, um, if you haven’t had a chance to scan it yet.

Stacey, could you share an example, if you can think of one, not asking for you to divulge personal details, but an example of an application that stood out to you as unique in a good way or a bad way, if that comes to mind. Sure. Yeah,

Stacey: so I guess, um, Oh my gosh, I’ve read so many applications over the years.

And so, and my admissions time is a little bit behind me now in terms of the applications I’ve read. But I could, I could tell you more about a recent applicant that I’ve been working with a CollegeAdvisor, um, you know, what really stood out to me was their brand was very much about, um, Connecting the science of the brain to our connectivity as humans.

Um, and so really connecting the social science to the STEM. Um, and also just making STEM more accessible to people. And so everything, um, about their profile was leaning in that direction. What I will, uh, say on the other end of it. is something that I steer them away from during our conversation is talking too much about another person in their essays because it doesn’t actually tell us anything about them.

And so they had a lot of essays where they felt the need to talk about a sibling who had a health issue at times. It seemed almost irrelevantly so. And so there seemed to be this pressure to have that narrative and I really had to convince them out of it. So don’t feel like you need to relay information that’s not actually answering the question.

And if you are talking about another person, ask the so what, what does that mean about you and why you’re applying to that institution?

Anna: Absolutely. I tell my students every sentence. should tell the reader something new about you and not in like a self centered conceited way just because that’s literally the purpose of your application is to help the readers get to know you and what you would bring to their campus.

So there’s a way to convey things about yourself. When you’re talking about other people. So just look at each sentence and make sure you’re doing that. Um, let’s see. Speaking of essays, Stacey, how important are they relative to GPA, test scores, extracurriculars? That’s

Stacey: a great question. I would say that I say the personal statement is arguably one of the most important parts of the application.

That said, we did go through earlier the academic cutoffs that you might see on some of the higher rated institutions. And so academics are still important. But in the grand scheme of your application, if your test score is a little lower, but still falls in the range, and your GPA is a little lower, but still falls in the range, and you put forth this Excellent personal statement.

You’re very focused. Your extracurriculars are aligning with the narrative you’re setting forth, such that, you know, they know you’re going to be able to succeed academically. And, you know, based on your personal statement, you are exactly the person they want on campus. That is going to get you admitted.

Your academics can only take you so far. I mentioned earlier that I have students with perfect test scores who don’t get into their top tier schools, and that is a reality. You know, you, you have to make a case for yourself, for this institution, and you want to make sure your essays are polished as a result.

Anna: Uh, I thought we had time for one more, if we go quickly, Stacey. Yeah, we can

Stacey: do it. Yep. Let’s do it.

Anna: One last piece of advice that you give every applicant.

Stacey: Ooh, um, ask for help. Absolutely ask for help. Get help. Do not submit the cold application. You will regret it. Um, it pays to have somebody take a second look and give you some feedback and it doesn’t take that long.

Anna: I love that. It’s fantastic advice. You can scan the QR code to get started with asking for help. Thank you everyone for coming out tonight. Thank you Stacey for sharing all of your wisdom with us. We appreciate it. This is the end of our webinar. Before you all go, I wanted to point out that we have, um, a bunch of great webinars coming up for the rest of the month, so check them out, come back and learn more about crafting your college essay, comparing Ivy League schools, hear from more former admissions officers, college lists, and more.

Um, we have webinars on almost everything. Every topic you could think of. We’d love to see you in the future webinars. You all have a great night.

Stacey: Thanks, Anna.

Anna: Thanks, Stacy.

Stacey: Bye now.