The Coalition for College on Tuesday announced that Liz Cheron, a former assistant vice president for enrollment and dean of admissions at Northeastern University, will become the organization’s new chief executive officer.
The Coalition, a membership organization founded in 2015 to promote college access, runs a shared application platform used by more than 170 colleges. It was formerly known as the Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success.
Two years ago, the Coalition announced that it would embed its application process into Scoir, an online college-advising platform used by students at thousands of high schools nationwide. That partnership allows students with a Scoir account to apply to any Coalition college by transmitting an admission form prepopulated with information — demographic data, grades, test scores, and so on — that resides under the same virtual roof.
During the 2022-23 admissions cycle, more than 62,000 applications were submitted through the Scoir platform. Nearly half (45 percent) of those applicants were eligible for an application-fee waiver; a third were first-generation students.
Last week, The Chronicle caught up with Cheron as she was preparing for her new job. She described the importance of innovation in admissions, what often works against it, and why she wanted to lead a high-profile organization that competes with the Common Application during an era of great uncertainty for enrollment leaders.
It’s hard to believe that the Coalition, once a controversial new entrant in this space, is going on 10 years old. When you look at the organization, what do you see?
One thing that really stands out to me is the partnership among the Coalition’s colleges. We’re all working on this shared goal of creating access at institutions that are both affordable and have these incredible outcomes in terms of graduation rates. But it’s also a partnership around innovation and a partnership with outside stakeholders and organizations.
So the question is: How can the Coalition not just work with its colleges and university members, but also bridge that space between higher ed and schools and community-based organizations? There’s innovation that this group has already harnessed, such as the partnership with Scoir, and there is a lot of potential for further innovation to create a process that’s more streamlined and user-friendly.
You just mentioned the need to bridge the space between higher education and high schools and the CBOs that support college applicants. What does that look like?
The Coalition has hired a new team member who’s based in New York City. She is the organization’s first program manager, and she’s working on the ground with the city’s Department of Education to coordinate professional-development sessions that are led by Coalition members. She’s taking her own knowledge and experience, having worked as a counselor, and creating programming that connects member institutions with a specific set of schools and CBOs, to address their needs in a more streamlined way.
Through this partnership, we’re bringing together the power of the Coalition membership, who are eager to do this work, and acting as a sort of convener or liaison to deliver something that counselors and schools are looking for, in terms of providing up-to-date, accurate programming about specific topics of the day in admissions. It’s filling a need by making the process of connecting much easier. This allows our programs to be about more than just one single institution.
I’ll be eager to see how that goes, what positive impact it can have, and whether it’s something that is scalable and replicable in other markets. Continuing to think about ideas that can scale and can have a broad impact is really important when you’re looking at a big goal of being able to advance access for more students.
What was your own college search like? And did that experience shape your thinking as an enrollment leader?
Yeah, absolutely. I was fortunate to be in a school and a household that did have a strong college-going culture. But I also was a Pell-eligible kid. Finances played a significant role in my college-search process. I attended Boston College, and that, in large part, was due to it being the most competitive financial-aid offer.
I have a deep appreciation for the financial-aid process itself, and I have a deep appreciation for what feels like to pay off student loans on an annual basis. I’ve also seen, through family and friends, how different the college experience can be if you are not attending an institution that has the commitment and resources to support students as fully as they would like to.
Please tell me about a college-access initiative that you’ve helped lead. What lesson did you take from it?
I was fortunate to be in a leadership role at Northeastern at a time when the institution was committing significant resources to supporting low- and middle-income students by enacting an aid policy that met full, demonstrated need for students. That was just incredible to see, in terms of the transformation of the institution, but also transformation in the conversations that we were able to have with students and counselors. That initiative changed the way they perceived their ability to attend the institution.
Then, being able to move forward with a no-loan policy for Pell-eligible students was an opportunity to align institutional strategic priorities with something that was great for students and something that was an opportunity to continue to differentiate ourselves within the higher-ed marketplace.
Being able to make bold moves requires a leader that has a certain level of comfort with taking some strategic risks.
Tied to this would be my experience working with the Torch Scholars Program at Northeastern, a cohort-based program for first-generation, low-income students, in which they are fully funded, with wraparound support. Being a mentor to Torch Scholars, working directly with the program, and knowing students from interview day to graduation … allowed me to see that ecosystem that surrounds each student, all of their supporters — their CBO counselors, siblings, and parents.
That really ties into my excitement for the work of the Coalition, where it’s not just about working with the applicant. It’s also thinking about those partnerships with school counselors and CBOs.
You’ve played a role in the Coalition since its inception. How would you describe the organization’s impact so far?
The partnership within the organization allows us to accelerate the adoption of best practices and great ideas. A tangible example of that came when we were working on the application design. While we were discussing the fee-waiver process, a colleague from Amherst College said, You know, we have this transparent information on our website that explains how we go about giving fee waivers: If a student identifies as one of these different populations, they get a fee waiver.
That experience caused us to take a step back as institutions and ask, Do we really need all this documentation for a student to prove that they qualify for a fee waiver? Could we take away one of the barriers to applying? And that’s where the fee-waiver process for the Coalition started.
It was a meaningful, student-friendly change for applicants. A student can now self-identify as one of these populations, without any hoops to jump through. It really puts the power in the student’s hands to say, Yes, I am receiving free and reduced lunch, and that’s not something that I need to further document to get a fee waiver.
What are some changes, big or small, that you would like to see in admissions?
Enrollment-management leaders are taking a step back and asking critical questions about what we require as part of our application process. They’re thinking more holistically about the student journey to college, what they’re asking applicants to do, and whether those requirements make a meaningful difference in how they make admissions decisions. There are lots of things that, as an industry, we have done for a long time, and it’s important to scrutinize this question on the application, or this required document, or this extra step — and to ask whether it meaningfully impacts our admissions decisions.
As an enrollment manager, you’re always balancing multiple goals in tandem.
For example, if we are looking at something like recommendation letters, we know that those can be really interesting, and they give institutions another perspective about the student. A teacher who’s observed that student is a really valuable voice. At the same time, as an institution, how are we using that information? And if we didn’t have it, or if we had it in a different format, how would that change our ability to make decisions?
Asking those critical questions is really important when we’re thinking about how we can change as an industry, how we can put ideas into the market. We need to start trying different things. And we’re seeing some exciting examples of that across the industry right now.
Such as?
One example is Caltech [California Institute of Technology]. They asked some critical questions about what they were requiring of applicants, what level of preparation in math was required, and how students could demonstrate that preparation in order to be successful there.
You’re talking about Caltech’s recent decision to drop its requirement that applicants must have taken calculus and specific science classes to be admissible?
Yes. They were able to do the legwork and take a step back and say, How could this be different? Do we need this requirement? And what else might we be able to do to support students?
Another example is St. John’s College, in Maryland. Their new process streamlines the application, and it makes engagement with the student part of the evaluation. It’s something really different.
Right, St. John’s recently introduced a discussion-based application option, allowing students to demonstrate their ability to engage in thoughtful conversations.
Yes. They’re not adding another form or document — they’re engaging with that student to be able to understand how that student might be a great fit at St. John’s. It’s another good example of being able to take a step back and look at all the things we are requiring, or that we believe as an industry or an institution have led us to better decisions, and saying, Well, how else could we do that? What other information might be valuable and worth trying it out?
And then it’s about evaluating your work to see whether it was successful. You’re making these informed decisions, and then, hopefully, spreading ideas across the industry.
Many people agree that major innovation is needed throughout college admissions. What, in your experience, tends to stand in the way of innovation?
One part of this is the amount of pressure enrollment leaders face. At any institution that has any level of financial dependence on tuition and enrollment, there is an expectation that you deliver a class. That’s critically important to the institution’s success, and to your success in your role.
There are some wins to be had that are relatively safe that will naturally align with that goal. And there are other innovations and ideas that, for an enrollment leader, sometimes feel really scary and hard, because you don’t know if it’s going to align with that goal. Is adding this step, or removing this step, or trying this new strategy, going to continue to produce the same results, in terms of my ability as an enrollment leader to bring in the class? Being able to make bold moves requires a leader that has a certain level of comfort with taking some strategic risks.
That’s where the importance of collaboration and partnership comes in. The more widely adopted you can have something be, the greater the opportunity is. As an enrollment manager, you’re always balancing multiple goals in tandem. At times, that can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re looking at it just from your own institutional perspective, and you’re asking, How am I going to improve this process? It’s a pretty big, bold task for a single institution to take on.
Also, I think there’s an opportunity there for institutions to provide more consistent information and answers to students’ and counselors’ questions that apply to a wider range of colleges and universities. How can we as an industry better convey information to students and counselors, so that some of these big questions about the process aren’t so opaque and confusing?
How, as you see it, has the Supreme Court’s decision on race-conscious admissions reshaped conversations among admissions leaders about college access and diversity?
I feel hopeful. I don’t see this as something that institutional leaders are going to back away from. I think we are seeing institutions really look within themselves, at their own policies and procedures, at their resources and willingness to take risks, and at what avenues they have to recruit students who might create additional diversity within their student body. I think that that is a very individual conversation right now, and that is perhaps in contrast to the way that higher-ed and admissions leaders like to problem-solve, which is through collaboration and sharing best practices.
In a year or two, I hope that institutions will be in a more comfortable place to come together, share, collaborate, and have more confidence in understanding how we as a field move forward.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.