Let's Talk About Admissions Committees

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#admissionchat episode 14 welcomes admission professionals from three private schools—Dana Brown, interim dean of enrollment management at The Lawrenceville School (NJ), Adam Choice, director of enrollment management at The Bush School (WA), and Janet Lien, assistant head of school and director of enrollment at The Browning School (NY).

Together, they help us demystify the admissions decision-making process. Key discussion points include:

• Why schools utilize admissions committees and the makeup of these committees, which typically include a diverse group of faculty and staff beyond just the admissions team.
• The multi-step process for reviewing applications, including initial screening, multiple reads by committee members, and a final discussion and vote on admissibility.
• The holistic approach schools take in evaluating applications, considering academics, extracurriculars, personal qualities, and the parent statement.
• How schools handle updates to applications and supplemental materials submitted after the initial application.
• The role of standardized testing in the admissions process, including test-optional and test-flexible policies.

Listen to the episode above, ask your smart speaker to play #admissionchat, or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform: Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube.

Transcript

Daren Worcester: Welcome to #admissionchat. Let's talk about admission committees.

Greetings. I'm your host, Daren Worcester, and today I'm excited to be joined by an all-star cast. It is my pleasure to introduce you to Dana Brown from the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, Adam Choice from the Bush School in Washington, and Janet Lien from the Browning School in New York. Everyone, thank you for joining us and welcome.

Dana Brown: Thanks for having us.

Daren Worcester:

Let's start by having each of you tell us a little bit about yourself and your school and what you do at your school, and I'm going to start with Janet.

Janet Lien: Thanks so much, Daren. Thanks for having us. My name'sJanet Lien. I'm one of the assistant heads of school and director of enrollment at The Browning School. We are a K-12 all-boys day school located on the UpperEast Side of New York City. In my past life, I like to tell people that I used to be a science teacher. So I came from the classroom and I tell people this because almost all of us working in schools in admission love children and we're all working in schools because we like working with kids. And so that's the starting point for today's conversation, I think. Let me pass it on toDana.

Dana Brown: Thanks so much, Janet. Good afternoon, good evening. My name is Dana Brown. I'm interim dean of enrollment at The Lawrenceville School located in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. We are 820 students enrolled from 34different states and 40 different countries. We're a 70% boarding population and 30% day students. Some of the highlights for Lawrenceville is that we through House and Harkness, Lawrenceville challenges a diverse community of promising young people to lead lives of learning, integrity and high purpose.And our mission is to inspire the best in each, to seek the best for all. And I look forward to joining the rest of my colleagues in this amazing conversation.And Daren, thanks so much for having us.

Daren Worcester: Of course. And last but certainly not least, Adam, you're up.

Adam Choice: Hi, everyone. I'm Adam Choice. I'm the director of enrollment management at the Bush School out in Seattle, Washington. We are a K-12 day school for all genders of about 735 students. I would say we lead in progressive education, a school that really focuses on experiential education as well, and it's a really fun community to be a part of, a place where it's super warm and welcoming and has a whole host of young, thriving and curious learners.

Daren Worcester: Awesome, thank you. Thank all of you. So our topic for this conversation is admissions committees and our goal here is really to pullback the curtain a little bit and demystify what goes on at schools as you're reviewing applications and all the fun that goes into that. Let's start our conversation at the basement level. Why do schools utilize admissions committees? And Dana, how about I start with you on this one?

Dana Brown: Certainly. So schools utilize admissions committees for a number of reasons, and I think at Lawrenceville, we are fortunate enough to have a large volume of applications, but we also recognize that we deploy travelers across the globe to gain a better perspective of our applicant pool.Given that we're 34 different states, 40 different countries across our student body, we utilize these committees to pretty much shape a class. We're either for reading more in-depth around academics, extracurricular activities or personal qualities. Those tend to be the areas that we focus in on when we drill down into the pool, but it also gives us an opportunity to hear from a larger sense of people who've had experiences in different parts of campus. So our campus folks on our committees are generally made up of coaches, their teachers, they may live in the houses, some may even be parents themselves.They have had children go through the school. A lot of their experience falls into helping us form and make those decisions.

Daren Worcester: Adam, did you have something to add?

Adam Choice: Yeah, I just wanted to add on and piggyback off of whatDana was sharing around the idea of having folks from different expertise and experiences on your campus. We at Bush are really intentional behind this because we think it's really important to ensure equity through the review process of applications and having folks from different backgrounds, different experiences, having different expertise really helps us combat and try to mitigate bias through this process, knowing that we have a whole host of different minds coming together collectively to review each application.

Daren Worcester: I think, Dana, both you and Adam, you talked about having different folks from different backgrounds. Are these typically people that are all amongst the admission team or represent different departments through out the school?

Dana Brown: In our department at Lawrenceville, we have folks who are full-time admission counselors who wear many hats and they are either in the dorm, I mentioned before, maybe have sent children to the school or are traveling to a certain region, whether that be international or domestic. And so they're coaching, teaching, driving buses. They have a full sense of the school community. So that's where they fall into our structure.

Adam Choice: Here at Bush, it's a mix of people within the community.So there's representation from our admissions team, but we also have DivisionDirectors, sometimes Dean of Students or Academics. We have folks from our support services team, both learning specialists and counselors on there as well to lend their perspective. And then we have a range of different teaching faculty from different departments as well.

Daren Worcester: That's great. So it sounds like the folks who are on the mission... Or excuse me, on the committees are really mission-aligned with the school and understand what's going on at the school. Is there any other training or anything specific that support that folks on the committee are given?

Janet Lien: Yeah, let me jump in here on this one, Daren. And I think that more and more admission teams and enrollment teams around in all of our offices and our schools are trying to be really mindful about how we approach the process. And for example, in the New York crew, ISAAGNY is our consortium of schools that agree to follow a set of admission practices primarily to protect the families, to ensure an equitable experience for all the families applying to our schools.

ISAAGNY requires that all of our offices get trained on anti-bias training for every step of the application process, and that includes committees. This year for our team, we are actually going to be creating our own committee norms, for example. Right? So yes, there's a lot of training from that angle. There's also training in terms of how do you read a test score? How do you read a set of test scores? What are we looking for when we look at teacher recommendations?

Our school does group interviews and not everybody knows what to look for when they come into observe group interviews. So we also train folks who come in to do that and all of that leads up to committee work. How do we sit and discuss students instead of looking to ding? How are we looking for opportunities to see this child thrive at our school? One thing I really want families to know is that I think a lot of folks think that admission committees are only serving as gatekeepers, and that is true, but there's another side to this job, which is we're trying to set up any student that we bring into our school for success and that is actually a responsibility and it's a responsibility to the student, is a responsibility to the family. So it is both gatekeeping, but we are also responsible for ensuring that everyone is well setup when they enter our schools.

Daren Worcester: Moving on to our next question, now that we know who's on the committee and what the makeup of the committee is, how do the applications flow after submission? What happens in the review process? What are the steps?Adam, would you like to start us off there?

Adam Choice: Yeah, sure. So once an application is submitted, what our team will do is we'll go through what we call is a scrub, going through all of the files, ensuring that they have all the required pieces submitted. And once everything is ready to go, then we send those out to our committee of readers.This may look different at different schools. I've worked at some schools where we don't have readers read in advance and have them read in the room while we're discussing, but at the school I'm at currently, we tend to give our readers anywhere between three and four weeks in advance of the committee meetings to read and submit their reading rubrics of each application.

So yeah, we at Bush tend to have at least two, sometimes even three reads per application. So similar to what I talked about earlier in terms of combating bias, that's another way for us to have multiple eyes on an application, have multiple reads in different perspectives. Once we get to committee, we then discuss a certain cohort of the applications that we received. So for the students who come across as a clear candidate to be admitted, I would say we don't spend as much time discussing those students and we're really focusing on the students who may either be on the fence or have some indicators that may suggest they may need a certain level of support or on that fence of admissibility. We tend to have a full day committee meeting, which allows us all to lend our perspectives, and then at the end of each discussion, we vote on admissibility and take those notes and that vote to determine who potentially could be admitted for the upcoming year.

Our admissions committee's charge is really to determine admissibility, and then it's our admissions team who then goes through and does the work to determine which students will actually receive an admit vote or decision. There's a lot of work that goes into that. We're trying to craft a diverse class of new students. Sometimes that's background. Sometimes that's their interests and activities. Sometimes that's different values they're going to bring to our community. That's generally the process. And then we release decisions and the script flips a little bit where we have to really start working hard to get folks excited to choose us amongst all the other schools that they're applying to.

Dana Brown: Sure. So at Lawrenceville, the way we set up our committees or we assign committee Chairs and they're divided up by region, generally geographic locations. So we may have someone who reads all the Northeast, the Southeast. We have someone who's assigned to different countries given our stretch across the globe. And then we also have day committees and boarding committees, and then we have to go through grade and gender. So at any point, there might be 16 different levers within the system that we have to fill, but we start essentially by geographic location. And then within that, we go to school group depending on where students... We have a large concentration of students from one particular school, we'll read within that area and then move them to the next committee or review. Could be an athletic review, it could be arts review, it could be an academic review, it could be an institutional priority review. And so it goes through many different layers.

They're typically anywhere from two to three readers on an application at one time, and then we go to vote for more specific things, and then we still shape the class after that, as Adam mentioned earlier. There's another layer in process to this. So on average, a file will likely be seen by anywhere from three to four different readers. And then at the time of just overall review, I can imagine that it could be even six to eight people. So we do take the time to review a lot of what all of our families submit from parent statement to letters of recommendation. All of the additional supplemental materials that they put in is very helpful as we move forward to make a decision.

Daren Worcester: That's amazing. With my parent hat on, I find it very reassuring to know that after all the work through the admissions process, that it's not hit or miss with one person, that multiple people are weighing in and determining whether or not my child is the right fit at your school. So I really like to hear that. Once they submit their application and you've already begun the review process through your committee, if a situation for a candidate changes, maybe they do a new community service project or they submitted theirDecember test scores, if you accept test scores, but they took the February test and they feel like they did a lot better, can they come back to you with this additional information? Janet, I see you nodding your head a lot. So we're going to jump to you on this one.

Janet Lien:

Yes, I think families are absolutely welcome to send things in, of course, and will do our best to review them. Speaking from my school, and I will say that we are probably all speaking from the I perspective here. I will just say it can't hurt. Right? I cannot promise that this is the practice at every school, but again, if you don't try, you don't get. So this can't hurt. Now, what I will say to families is that it is possible to overdo it. The necessary components of a student's file that a school requires, so that would include teacher recommendations, the report cards, interviews, interview notes that we take, existing test scores, those are there to tell us what we need to know about the student. Everything else is supplementary.

And what we really need to do at the first end is actually, just to try to put together a picture of a student's learning profile. What are they going to be like as a student? And then all the other dimensions come to that. Right? So if something is just gilding the lily, it may not be necessary, but if something really is going to give us a new way to look at your child and is actually going to be additive, then I definitely think, yeah, send it in. It can't hurt.

Daren Worcester: Whenever we do webinars or we have family submit questions for admission.org for any conversations we're having, we always get a ton of questions about what's weighted more in the application? What do schools look at more? Where should I spend my time? Everybody wants to know what you're really looking closely at. So is there anything that you put more weight in the application or is it really a holistic look and everything checks and balances against each other? I think Dana, it's your turn.

Dana Brown: Certainly. So that major question of where's the weight in the application? Is there something that takes more precedence over the other?Our reading rubrics allow for us to generally weight things in areas that are most important to the overall school composition and that student body. So for instance, academics are key and all of our schools are competitive in a way, but also, want to make sure that these students are ready for the depth and the rigor that our institutions bring. So I would say academics are key.

And then we look at extracurricular activities. What are you doing outside of school that will contribute to our school communities further along the way? And then personal qualities, what are your teachers saying about you? How are people viewing you in your school community? But more recently, I will say what I have been zeroing in on more and more the parent statement. That parent statement does matter to me. I look for that balance between what the parent statement shows, and then sometimes teachers will also reveal more about the family in that way about the type of good citizens, if you will. The parents will be in our communities. I think that's important post-COVID and more and more what's the balance perspective that families are bringing to this process. We essentially look at that parent statement and say,"Is this a family who we hope to call at 9:10 PM at night and see through a college process given our boarding environment or even for our day students?" It's more of a partnership in that way that allows for us to be a little bit more focused.

So aside from academics, extracurricular activities and the personal qualities, those areas within the reading rubric, I have seen many of my colleagues lean a little bit more into the parents' statement and how parents are presenting their children in a very balanced perspective so we can better serve them through the highs and lows of high school.

Adam Choice: The real baseline is the academic readiness piece. Right?So I think all of our schools are trying to determine whether or not we believe a student can be successful and thrive within the academic programs that we hold. So that's the general criteria for admissibility. And then all the other pieces are supplemental and are additive as well. I wouldn't say within that academic piece, we place one over the other. We look at all different datapoints together collectively to determine whether or not we think a student could thrive at our school. But we do take a very holistic approach to reviewing application.

So once it's determined a student academically could do the work and thrive at our school, we want to see what else they'll contribute to our community, whether that's through extracurricular activities, whether that's through leadership, whether that's through simply being a kind community member. Those are important things to us. And as Dana said as well, that goes for the parents and guardians too. So when we're bringing in a new family, we're bringing in the family and not just the student and we believe that everyone in their family is a member of our community. So all of those pieces are really important for us as we're reviewing applications.

Janet Lien: I hope I'm not just being repetitive here, but I found it helpful to share with families that when we say it's a system of checks and balances, we are really using one part of the file to look at another part of the file and see there's agreement there, which is why what Dana was talking about makes so much sense to me. So for example, if a student doesn't fare well on the reading comprehension part of the test, I'd want to look at what hisEnglish teacher says and I also want to see what his report cards, whether there've been any trends in his report cards, just to see whether that was a fluke or whether there's a concern here that we just need to be aware of. That doesn't mean this child won't be admitted. It just means we need to know the student's particular background.

That's a bit like detective work, if you will. All of that is just for us to understand a student's learning profile, propensity for learning, and this is again, just to reiterate, the piece that this is just so that we can figure out if student can be successful at our schools. Now, one thing I'll add that for folks to be careful about, and it goes back to our previous questions about adding things later in the cycle, something that isn't that very helpful is when you send in those letters of support from someone's uncle's best friend who attended your school 30 years ago that maybe knows this kid because they met twice. That letter is not going to help your child's application to the school because this person, even though they're great supporters of our school, fans of our school, they know what we're looking for, they can't tell us anything about your child. They can't tell us anything more about your child than their teachers can.

So trust the process in that way. Trust that what we are asking you to submit is going to help us learn what we need to know about your child.

Daren Worcester: So the next topic that I was hoping we could pivot to is standardized testing and the current landscape in school admissions is the case where a family very likely could encounter a school that requires testing, a school that doesn't test results, and a school that gives them the option of whether or not to submit results. We recently got a question from parents,"Why do schools even look at testing anyway?" I would love to hear your perspectives on it wherever you land on your school and how you guys treat it and how it factors into your admissions process, if in fact it does? Who would like to start on that one?

Adam Choice: I can start us off. Yeah, so Daren, what you just mentioned around... A lot of things changed during the pandemic. Right? I would say most schools were likely acquiring standardized testing pre-pandemic, and then the pandemic hit and a lot of schools went away for that for various reasons. Bush was one of those schools. We decided not to require standardized testing at that point for a couple of different reasons, for equity of access and just knowing that we did not want to put any family in a position where they felt the need to compromise the safety and health of their child just for one piece of the application. So we were pretty firm on that and we actually held that for several years, and this is the first year we're actually returning to requiring standardized testing this year.

In our region in Seattle, schools are doing different things. Some schools require one particular exam and some schools have a more test flexible model like our school, which I'll talk about in just a moment, and some schools have decided not to return to standardized testing at all because that's the philosophy of their community. So our test flexible model now is that a student can submit any standardized test they've taken either this current school year or the previous school year. We decided to do that in partnership with some of our peer schools to remove some of that anxiety and stress around the testing process for students and families, knowing that not every student is going to feel great about having to sit for an exam that fall, but also, there's those issues of access, whether it's financial or for test prep as well. So if students have already taken one the previous year, whether it's the CTP through the ERB or the state SBA and MAP testing, we'll take those as well.

So we're excited for the new flexible model. It allows a little bit more equity through that process and it still allows us to gain another data point on the student's academic readiness, and that's really all we're using it for. It's one additional data point. We are not using that as the end all, be all. We never tell families that there's a certain cutoff for you to be admissible at our school. That's just not what we believe as an institution, but yeah, I think it has been received differently by different folks, but overall, I think it is going to help our committees gain a much better understanding of every student's academic abilities and I think that's an important piece of this process.

Daren Worcester: I'm really glad that you said it's a data point because Ido think families look at it as top score gets in and that's the way it works.And I think we all know from your side of the fence that that's not really necessarily how it works in that your schools may use testing for a variety of different things, from course selection to advising groups, that sort of stuff.Janet, would you like to add to that?

Janet Lien: Going back to the pandemic, we also in-test optional. I have to tell you that in the absence of test scores, it made our work more difficult as a committee because every school has a different way of grading. So we had report cards that had grades. Public schools were not giving grades, but they also didn't do... The teacher recommendations were not coming in from public schools. So we were missing data points left and right, and because we went test optional because families were not going to be able to have equitable access to test centers and testing opportunities, it was the right decision to make at the time. It actually, I think at the end, made for a tougher time for the admission committee to try to maintain our equitable practices in the end.So I actually think that if, again, folks can look at testing as something that is there to assist us in decision-making and understanding your child, that would be a way to adjust our thinking about those standardized tests.

I can share that at Browning, we do also use our entrance tests as part of a long range longitudinal study. Really, what we're trying todo is to look at a student's journey at Browning across the years that they're enrolled here. Their SSAT or entrance test score is also part of that whole longitudinal study and it is our way to assess whether or not our program is meeting our promise to families. That's another way in which we are using test scores.

Daren Worcester: Another question families always ask or wonder about are things like financial aid application status or students' individualized learning plans. Are those being factored in when committees are making their decisions? Dana, would you like to jump in on how aspects like that are treated at your school?

Dana Brown: As far as financial aid, there is a separate committee for financial aid. We go through the entire review process first, and then determine where the student falls in the class and shape the class, and then we overlay aid on top of that and see if we can meet the demonstrated need of the applicant in a separate financial aid committee. Certainly after those decisions go out, there's a process for families to appeal. We're not looking at the dollars alongside the academics, if you will. So there's no comparison in that way, but there are schools that do have limited financial aid budgets.We all have a limit somewhere and we can't take everyone. We wish we could, but then we would be much larger schools and it would be a very different setting.

So to be fully transparent, there are some moments when you do have to... You can't take everyone, and sometimes that's based on demonstrated need. That's why we encourage families to apply to a wide variety of schools. We encourage them to be upfront and transparent even in their scholarship aid application about things such as taking care of a parent or maybe they're sending money home to another country to care for another individual. All of those factors go into play in that scholarship aid process.

As far as the individualized learning plan or academic support, we don't ask for that information directly, but this goes back to whatI mentioned earlier, and certainly, Janet had touched on that at the very top of this session, about opportunities to thrive and ensuring that we set up students for success and it's our responsibility at these institutions to be able to meet the family where they are and meet their needs.

Going back to the parent statement, that's important for families, I think to disclose that gently in the parent statement if they can. If they're looking for more specific information on our schools that offer academic support, they should inquire about that at the time of whether it's an interview or maybe when they go on tour, but we try to be as transparent and upfront because we want to make sure that the student is set up for success and not for the bumper sticker or for the country club chat or the cocktail party.There's a little bit of that branding that comes along within this process, andI find that sometimes families who are in need of more counsel aren't sure where to place that information. So again, that parent statement, that is that handshake. That's the first thing that we would likely lean on and encourage families to be upfront about that if their student needs more academic support.

And then on the financial side, it's important for you to disclose that as well, if there are other things that are impacting your family, loss of job, perhaps there's a situation with so many things that are happening out West with wildfires and natural disasters, even with COVID, we have a question in our parent statement area that it asks you to explain any circumstance that may have impacted the family in any academic career over the last couple of years. So again, going back to that holistic piece to get as much information as possible.

Daren Worcester: Thank you, Dana. I think you've definitely busted some myths in that and your answer is going to be very much appreciated. I love what you were saying about the IEPs. I think probably a lot of families hold back on disclosing a lot of that information. I think we really want to empower them to disclose it to you because as we talk about finding that right fit, they need to find a school that's going to have the right services and support in place for their child, not necessarily as you said, the school with the right bumpersticker that they're looking for. So all very important. It doesn't translate on the podcast, but I saw a lot of heads nodding from Adam and Janet. Do you guys have anything else you'd like to throw in there?

Adam Choice: I would say yeah, the IEP piece, it's tricky. Right? Because there's ADA laws that we have to adhere to as an admissions office. At Bush, the way I like to talk about is that yes, we're not allowed to ask families proactively for that information. If they would like to share that, we appreciate that. The way I approach it in my particular school is I actually, if a family provides any evaluations, I don't share that evaluation with the full admissions committee. That's one way to try to help protect the institution, depending on whatever admissions decisions are made. Typically, it is helpful to share that information with our learning specialist team so they can gain a sense of what level of accommodations a student would need? Would that student be able to thrive within our community? But we are actually proactive on our end of trying to get information on the supports that are available to students in comparison to the ones that aren't available to students at our school early in the process to try to educate families on whether or not their student could potentially thrive within our community.

And some of that is through print material. Some of that is we have a virtual support services event that we host for folks to connect with our learning specialists and our wellness teams. That is a process that we're trying to mitigate any of those challenges later in the process, which I think is really helpful for families because at the end of the day, this is a partnership. Both the school and the family are trying to determine where are the right educational environments for their students to be able to thrive and feel good about themselves as learners.

And then everything that Dana said about the financial aid piece, I agree with as well. We have two separate committees that don't overlap in decision-making. However, we do have a financial aid budget. And so ultimately, when decisions are made, we're only able to offer awards to a certain amount of students each year.

Janet Lien: I do want to echo that this is with the IEP and neuropsych is a challenging one to navigate. I like what Adam said. We have made the decision not to accept neuropsych as part of the official part of a student's application. But yes, so we do not make those available to the admission committee but if we have questions, if the family does share them with us openly, we will share that with our learning specialist just to get a better understanding, especially if the family has come to us with that understanding, wanting to be open. Where families want to share, we encourage them to do so if they've been accepted, and that is the time when we should then have this very frank conversation, "Show us the IEP, show us the neuropsych, let's have a meeting with a learning specialist. Then let's have a mutually honest conversation about whether your child can truly be supported here now that we have a fuller picture." That may be another way to approach it in that decision-making period as well.

Daren Worcester: Excellent. Thank all of you for your insight on that one. Another piece that I think probably families get a little bit of an anxiety over is whether or not they can come in for an open house and a campus tour. I know the beauty these days is you can do an interview remotely. Janet and Adam, your perspective on this is probably a little bit different than Dana's, being day schools. Even for you, a family could come into the process late and you may be all booked up and not have openings for people to come in, that sort of thing. So as you guys are looking through your candidates and having those discussions, does it make a difference one way or the other in terms of somebody actually being able to come to campus and meet you face to face? Dana, why don't we start with you on that one?

Dana Brown: Over the last couple of cycles have adjusted our schedules to accommodate both in-person as well as online, and we found that we get a lot of traffic in the summer. Especially from international families who were coming from overseas and attending summer programs, we welcome them in the summer to come and get their interviews done and do lots of tours. So we'll be open at the end of June, all the way up until maybe the second week of August.And we recognize that families domestically are traveling back and forth, whether they're for different academic camps or even athletic camps, we'll get tons of traffic then.

And then during the academic year when families decide to return when we're in full swing full session, we offer tours and interviews during our class schedule, as well as Saturdays. And then what we've decided todo in December and January is to go fully virtual and offer information sessions on certain days, and that way, they can connect with the counselor.Information sessions and tours are still going on, but we've decided to do all virtual because we're covering more ground early in the morning from 6:00 AM, all the way till 9:00 AM. And then we go from another session from maybe 10:00 to 2:00. And then we have another group of interviews online from 5:00 to 9:00 PM. So we're trying to meet that demand of a very, very busy family.

There's no difference if it's online or if it's in-person. We just hope that you'll make that touch point. And then we try to extend ourselves to be out in the field across the different states and countries in your area where we hold receptions or have some sort of maybe alumni events. So there are different touch points to try to meet families where they are, but we do recognize that this is a very intense process. This kid is very busy and we open to making sure that families are able to connect with us, but that does not mean that we are trying to check off whether or not you came to our reception and if you are in-person, if you get more points for one over the other. That's not the case. We are committed to remaining open and available to you in order to make sure that you get to see our campuses and feel welcome by a number of folks that you'll meet along the tour.

Daren Worcester: Janet, Adam, anything you guys want to add there?

Adam Choice: For us, there are some required visits as part of ours.Since we're a day school, most of our students are applying from within the region. So all of our student visits for our main entry points take place in-person. So that is a requirement, but as Dana shared, we are fully aware that this is a busy process. Families have working parents and kids have extracurriculars on top of their school. And also, we have some families who are applying from out of town, out of state, sometimes even out of country. Seattle's a pretty big transplant city, so people are coming and going all the time.

So we fully recognize that we try to have at least one virtual offering for families to engage with our community throughout that process, but it's not always required. We like to offer these in-person events for families because there is no real authentic way to show who we are as a community in all the things that make us special through a virtual event. You can get some pieces of it, that connection with members of the community, but to really feel it and live it and see that vibrance within our community, you really have to be here to feel and experience that. So we hope that folks will come to our campus, but we certainly do not knock any applicants because they're not able to make it here.

Daren Worcester: Excellent. And do all of you do some sort of on-campus revisit day after decisions go out? A lot of nodding. Anybody want to elaborate? What goes into that for families that maybe come late to the process and don't get the opportunity to visit at the early stage? Janet, would you like to go into that?

Janet Lien: So like Adam, we also do get international students who apply to us and they may not always be able to make the trek for a visit. And yeah, our preference is for an in-person visit, but if they can't, then we make do and try to make our engagement with them as meaningful as possible electronically. But we do offer in-person revisits, and if families can do so in-person when that time period comes after they've been admitted, then that's great too.

Now, having said that, we've also all just lived through a pandemic where we all had to pivot. We all had to find different ways to engage families when we couldn't welcome them in-person to our buildings, to our campuses. So I think being scrappy, trying to find ways to make things work for families that they can't. So one way may be to set up phone calls with the people that they might want to speak with, whether it's a coach, whether it isa Division Head, whether it's a family during the pandemic. For example, we arranged for students to join in to actually sign into Zoom classes so they could observe classes via Zoom.

We can't really do that anymore, but if you are coming in from overseas, we are going to do what we can to accommodate because we don't want to close off an opportunity to get to know that.

Dana Brown: And for our spring visit days, we typically invite day students and boarders back to campus to go to classes with a current student.And then we have programming for parents where they can meet with the health center, college office, academic deans, coaches, teachers. We try to give them a full immersive experience just in one day. And then certainly leading up to that, there may be outreach from a parent association member or maybe even some alumni. So it varies based on the days that we have scheduled. When we go out with our decisions, they'll be informed of what those days are. And we really encourage families to try to take a chance to come to one of those days and spend the entire afternoon, but we recognize that the tables do turn. Adam mentioned that earlier, and that's when we're hoping that you won't leave us at the altar because we do need to fill these classes at the end of the day.

And we know that students have a lot of choices. There are many wonderful schools out there, and this is where we try to one up each other within our own peer school group to see who can woo the family and fill the class. So whether spring visit days, they're helpful for that admitted class.But in addition to that, the one thing we haven't jumped into is the waitlist. And that's another area where I think families tend to overlook and devalue a waitlist offer from our schools at some point, but they're there for lots of great reasons and many schools are, I think finding more valuable gems on the waitlist. We talked earlier about how we don't have enough room for all applicants and a waitlist is important for schools.

Sometimes it's not ranked and families will go into asking what that all means, but I just hope that people who are listening to this will just demonstrate a little bit of patience and grace at that post-decision date time because you never know when a school is going to call you up and say,"Hey, we have an offer or an opportunity for you to fill a slot." So don't count out the waitlist on this. Don't ever think that we don't necessarily want you in the beginning, but that waitlist is a really great offer and over time, will be something that a school may hopefully invite you through their door. So for that reason, just keep your hands up for the waitlist.

Daren Worcester: Excellent. Great points. Thank you all on that one. I steered us off course a little bit on that. I just thought it would be good to let people know if they're sweating, the fact that they can't go to campus before applying, that they will likely get the opportunity to get a second chance on that as when you get into the decision period. Our next question, another one I think families are always wondering. I'm going to make it a two-sided question. Is there anything that candidates do that when you're reviewing or talking to them, doing interviews, anything in there that really stands out to you as being, "Hey, this is a kid that really would be a great fit for our school?" Or conversely, anything you often see families doing that you maybe wish they wouldn't?

Adam Choice: Again, I talked a little bit earlier on about kids demonstrating what they would contribute to a community. Right? And at Bush, we're really all about kindness. If there's different ways that they're demonstrating kindness, being a good community member in their world, in their life, that's something that really stands out to us. There's different ways to demonstrate that. Sometimes it's through leadership opportunities, sometimes it's through special circumstances that they're working. Maybe they have a sibling who has certain needs and they're supporting their sibling, and sometimes it's just genuinely how they engage with our community through the process. So there's a lot of ways to see that, but we love to see when kids are demonstrating that, yes, they would be a great member of our community to bring in.

Conversely, I think there are a lot of things that families and applicants could do through the process that wouldn't be as exciting for an admissions committee, and there's a range. How they're engaging while they're on campus here, not being kind, adding a little bit too much pressure in their interaction with a faculty member around their program or being demanding on the admissions team. We spend a lot of time being intentional and thoughtful behind the programming that we offer, and we're oftentimes working with thousands of different families throughout a given admissions season. So we can't always accommodate every single family's want and need through the process. And sometimes if there's not that flexibility and understanding on the family side, that's not a great feeling for the admissions team through the process. Be your authentic selves through this process because for us, that's what we're really looking for. We want to have a clear understanding of who we're potentially bringing into our community and we hope to see that alignment through the process.

Janet Lien: People always ask me, "Who are we looking for to join us at Browning?" And the way I answer the question is, "Who's going to be the most successful here?" And I always say the kids that make the most out of their experience here are the ones that want to participate. They demonstrate that they want to learn. They demonstrate teachability. They want to have good learning relationships with their teachers. They want to become leaders and anything that demonstrates that in the admission process are things that we look for. I will advise families against writing first choice letters. Don't commit yourself if you're not sure yet. Things will change for you and you do not want to paint yourself into a corner because it is very hard for you to extricate yourself out of a first choice letter if you've written one.

So I would say if you are very keen on a school, I think a letter of interest could be great. "Hey, Adam. We really enjoyed getting to know Bush School and here are all the things we liked about your school and thank you so much for a great experience." Right? That's plenty, but I think if you commit, you may find yourself regretting that. I think we may all have horror stories of things gone wrong. I will share one, and this is when things are done out of earshots of the admission team, but I will tell you that things get back to us. And so just know that, and this was, I think done because they wanted to pressure test, the family maybe wanted to pressure test if we were actually being that authentic or not, we were that authentic or not, but a family was putting a lot of pressure on our student ambassadors to speak the truth. "No adults here, come on now." They were almost goading them into an impossible situation.

And to put students who are students, they're children in situations like that, to me, really is not a good thing to do. And so if you really want an authentic sense of the school, the best people to speak to is actually the families and get a sense of what their experiences are like, but it is not to put our children, our students on the spot. That'll be my story.

Daren Worcester: Excellent. All great points there. Dana, you had something to add?

Dana Brown: I think one of the things that we always say in this office and amongst our peers that you interview begins in the parking lot. And oftentimes, as soon as from the car all the way into the waiting room, and even when you pick up the phone, there are times when my support staff may come inhere and say they have been greeted well by a family. And then there's sometimes when they say, "This family was very rude and nasty on the phone." Those things matter in how you decide to show up, whether it's as soon as you step foot out the car or even when you pick up the phone. So I think that's one of the things, going back to originally the things we talked about at the top of this podcast, was families who are good citizens and showing up with that in mind and how you intend to float through the process.

But also, when it comes to, and I think our schools are guilty of creating some of this too, is that the highly specialized parent who wants to meet the coach and meet the this and meet the teacher and all the things, and they line it up and ultimately want to create that pre-revisit day, spring visit day moment. Our teachers, the folks that you may need to meet on your visit are also in the classroom. They are also doing duties where they may not be able to meet your child on that particular day. So we just ask for a little patience and grace yet again, but know that we likely have things online or maybe we'll have other students reach out to your child, but that does not mean we don't value who they are as individual. That does not mean we don't see them. That does not mean that they won't get that attention later on down the line.

And then Daren, you asked the other part of the question regarding what not to do in the process. Here's the number one thing not to doin the process. I have seen families come through these doors sometimes and they will highlight the college matriculation list. They will go down the college matriculation list and find the dream school and insert their child's profile right there, HYP Plus Harvard, Yale, Princeton Plus or whatever dream school that might be. They will ask in the interview, "What's the college outcome?" And the kid is maybe seventh grade, might be eighth grade, depending on when they come through in the process. We can't predict that.

So I would say that's one way in which you will raise some flags if you come in with a highlighted college matriculation list. We recognize that this is a marathon and not a sprint towards the end goal, but more and more, we're starting to see that. And I would discourage families from leading with that in mind during their eighth grade, ninth grade interview.

Daren Worcester: Those are all some outstanding points. Thank all of you.Nobody asked me, but I'm the host. So if I were to throw my two cents in there,I would add to be very careful about the pressure you're putting on your child.An adolescent, pre-teen, teen, whatever grade they're in, that's under a lot of pressure, they're not going to at their best, their authentic self and whether it's in an interview or sharp and clear mind taking a standardized test when they're really stressed out. So that's the one I would... Chill out a little bit, let the process play out. I see a lot of heads nodding, so maybe we'll keep this in. We won't cut it out, but that would be my two cents there.

All right, we're getting to time. I would love to throw one more question across the board for all of you to answer. We're back to our mission committee topic here, and we're at the end. We're at the decision-making phase. If you can pull back the curtain a little bit there, what goes on at that juncture? How are your committees making the final calls on who's going to get... Dana, you mentioned the waitlist before. Who's going to get the admit decision? Who's going to get for the time being waitlisted? And let's start with Janet on that when you go to the hot seat.

Janet Lien: Thank you for that question, Daren. So at Browning, I think very much like Adam, we also use a rubric for the reading process. And so if there's general agreement that a student's file is reading very strongly, that they are a strong student, that they're well-rounded and they are scoring pretty highly across different categories for us, then they're pretty much in the admit pool of our applicant pool for that grade level. Then there are students that maybe are getting a bit of a mixed set of ratings, and those are the ones that we would discuss. And then conversely, students who receive some low ratings, they might already be probably in the pool that will receive a decline.

Now, that doesn't mean they don't get discussed. So our committee tends to... We actually discuss all students, whether you have a very strong read or not, partly because sometimes reading these files, we get to know these families and these children, we're like, "Oh, did you see this part of that file?" And we all want to talk about it. So we do discuss every child, no matter the score, but we generally know the direction in which the decisions are going.

The hardest part is actually the pool that gets a little bit of a mixed group. And this is where those committee norms I was telling you about when we were talking about training, our admission committees comes in.So one of the norms that we're instituting for ourselves this year is to flip it to test it. So if we really want to admit a student, let's try to think,"Okay, what will be the reasons the student may not be successful or how will we need to support the student to be successful here?" If you really don't think the student can be admitted, then flip it to test it. If we were to admit the student, how will we need to support the student so that they can be successful here? This is so that we can give this child the most wholesome, holistic read and discussion as best as possible. So that's generally how we come to decisions as a committee. Does that answer the question?

Daren Worcester: Yes, that does. Dana, Adam, would either of you like to jump in on that?

Dana Brown: I think Janet covered it all in terms of we go back to the rubric and the value number-wise that a student may receive in a category of admit, waitlist, and deny. And I think that what's helpful there is going back to pretty much the rubric drives a lot of that, and it allows for discussion, and that's why we have people on the committee. Your application will likely be reviewed by more than two or three different people. Both Adam and Janet mentioned how that works at their respective institutions, but we want parents to understand that this is not just a 30-second glance. This is something we tend to go back toward in many ways, whether it's by greater gender, maybe it's by a certain need for a great robotics kid or someone who's in the orchestra that plays the bassoon. We're constantly looking for that talent across the board, particularly at a residential community. So there's different levers that we are able to pull upon to offer those admits.

And again, keep your eyes open and hands up for the waitlist. It's all about waitlisted kids sometimes. Those are things that even stretch into June or July because summer melt is a real thing. Attrition is areal thing at our institutions, and the admission waitlist is there for that reason and is a completely valuable part of the enrollment process.

Adam Choice: And I would just piggyback off that is advice I would give to families is don't be discouraged by a waitlist decision. Oftentimes, it's simply due to numbers. A lot of schools will have many more admissible applicants than available spaces, and we're not able to admit every single admissible candidate. And there's a lot of layers that go into determining who will actually be admitted first round versus maybe coming off the waitlist later on. But don't be discouraged. There is a real option to still be admitted to schools if you are in the waitlist because there are so many different factors that go into that decision period when families are making their enrollment decisions. And as Dana said, it may be within that small window of time that families need to make their enrollment decisions. Sometimes it extends into the spring and summer when there is that attrition and summer melt as well.

I just recommend families stay in communication with the school to get a sense of what that may look like for that individual community. Typically, admissions teams will be as transparent as they can be around expectations and anticipating potential movement.

Daren Worcester: Those are great points. And Dana, I just want to clarify for families that don't necessarily know, when you say summer melt, that's an inside term. You're referring to candidates who committed to the school who you thought are coming, but ultimately end up backing out of that commitment during the summer, correct?

Dana Brown: That is correct. That's what summer melt means, and Adam put that very well in terms of just the attrition and hanging on throughout the summer. People move in and out of areas all the time, and families may have to make decisions, and sometimes they're financial and sometimes they're personal.And going back to that waitlist and seeing who's on it in the middle of June or July, those are the best calls of the season, because they're at least expecting it. And they might be on the beach or they might be in transit, and you're saying, "Hey, guess what? We've got an opening. Would you consider joining our school?" So again, keep the light on for the waitlist.

Daren Worcester: That's amazing. This has been fantastic. Thank you all for sharing your insight today. I think this is a part of the process that for families has had a lot of uncertainty around it. So I think all of you and your insight will really help them feel better about the process. So thank you for your time today. It is so greatly appreciated.

Janet Lien: Thanks, Daren. It's so great to be here with Adam and Dana too. Thank you both.

Announcer: Thanks for joining us for this episode of the#admissionchat podcast. #admissionchat is a production of the Enrollment Management Association. For more EMA resources to help families throughout the private school application process, visit Admission.org.