The People Who Deliver Your Students

Wake before sunrise, start the rental car, drive to the first high school. Lug the brochures to the college fair, spread the banner on the table. Text the students. Study the data. Return the parents’ emails. Read the applications, one by one by one. Plan the open house. Give the talk. Answer questions. Listen. Smile.

That’s how you bring in a freshman class.

Fate doesn’t deliver students to college campuses. Enrolling all those tuition-paying customers takes work — often grueling, never glamorous. Enrollment chiefs and admissions deans devise complex recruitment campaigns to get the students they need, but their unsung subordinates must execute the plan.

Young admissions officers, not far removed from college themselves, are the first and sometimes only campus representatives that many applicants meet. Fresh-faced ambassadors for the industry, they shake the clammy hands of a nation brimming with college anxiety. It’s up to them to convert prospects into applicants, to bring the admitted on board.

Nearly two dozen current and former admissions officers, all in their 20s and early 30s, described to The Chronicle life on the profession’s lowest rungs. Their candid accounts reveal how the ever-escalating competition for applicants, revenue, and prestige affects the front line.

Although many see the work as meaningful, its pace and pressures can leave them exhausted, frustrated, and lonely. All mention intangible rewards, such as bonding with applicants and seeing students succeed. And yet most feel a prevalent tension between optimism and resignation. A desire to help students draws many into an enterprise that, for all its altruistic ideals, often puts institutional interests first.

In admissions, burnout is constant, and turnover is high. The profession has long relied on cheap, young labor to carry heavy loads. Sure, many new graduates don’t plan to stick around long. But even the most promising hires, eager to promote educational opportunity, may see a career path lined with compromises.

Long hours and low pay can deepen their discouragement. “The demands are corporate-level,” says one former admissions officer, recalling 60- and 70-hour weeks. Although the figures vary by region, the median salary for admissions counselors, the ones just starting out, is about $38,000. That’s slightly less than recreation coordinators make. And some entry-level recruiters earn much less in hourly wages. Given their role in filling seats and coffers, it’s fair to ask: Do colleges value them enough?

The question has become more urgent. This year the Department of Labor announced new overtime-pay regulations that apply to admissions offices. Starting in December, most employees making less than $47,476 a year must receive overtime compensation if they work more than 40 hours a week. That’s a big deal for the admissions realm, where long days often stretch into nights and weekends. To comply with the new law, colleges must either give raises to those below the threshold, pay them considerable overtime, or curtail their duties. Senior administrators are scrambling to adjust.

Money, though, is just one consideration. Many factors shape newcomers’ professional experiences, persuading them to stay or bolt. Who goes on to lead admissions offices — their commitment to access and equity, how they balance institutional trade-offs — matters to anyone with a stake in higher education’s future. Maybe that’s why today’s novices inspire so many harsh and contradictory criticisms: They’re too idealistic or too pragmatic, too unprofessional or too businesslike.

Mostly, they’re overlooked. That’s a shame, because they experience firsthand the tensions inherent in admissions. That bold new recruitment initiative looks great on paper; they see it on the ground.

Each season brings distinct challenges. Sophie H. Howard has thrown herself into them all. The week after arriving at Trinity College, in Connecticut, last September, she hit the road to talk up a campus she barely knew. During her first year, some moments thrilled her, others stung. “It’s all-consuming,” she says of the job.

Ms. Howard, 24, is the kind of admissions officer any director would like to hire. Earnest and reflective, she speaks vividly. She enjoys multitasking and data mining. Having studied education and psychology, she also thinks a lot about how her profession could and should promote social justice. A biracial woman in a field led mostly by white men, she wants to help increase opportunities for underrepresented students, for all sorts of teenagers who’ve shown great resilience. “I’m an incorrigible optimist,” she says. “I see the good in everyone.”

That helps in recruitment season, when relentless travel wears everyone down. Each fall, representatives from four-year colleges crisscross the nation, driving to four or five high schools a day to meet prospective students, attending college fairs and other recruitment events in the evenings. Although travel appeals to the young and energetic, venturing alone to far-flung towns can prove daunting (some newbies have confessed to bringing their mothers along). Even bold, independent types find the trips draining.

Last fall Ms. Howard was assigned territories in four states. Trinity needed her to make the most of her time in each one. Using historical data to see where the college had netted successful applicants and matriculants, she planned her visits accordingly. Though she didn’t have hard-and-fast goals, the previous year’s numbers lodged in her mind.

For six weeks, Ms. Howard pinballed from state to state. Most mornings she left her hotel by 6 and navigated her way to the first high school by 7:30 or 8. By early November, she had been to New York three times, Illinois twice, and spent a week in Pennsylvania. “We’re all sharks in admissions,” Ms. Howard says. “If we stop, we die.”

Eating a proper meal is often impossible on the road, where the rule is fast food or nothing. One admissions officer recalls wolfing down a microwaved mozzarella stick while driving — and accidentally swallowing part of a napkin. Planning ahead, Ms. Howard stuffed her bags with Clif bars and apples.

During their treks, road runners remain tethered to other duties. Last fall Ms. Howard, part of Trinity’s multicultural recruitment team, helped coordinate the college’s annual preview weekend. She booked flights, train trips, and bus rides for about two dozen teenagers from the road. Day and night, she corresponded with eager applicants and their parents. Do I need to submit this document? How do I send my artwork? Can you tell me more about this program?

To keep her energy up, she would do jumping jacks in her room. “That way,” she deadpans, “I was going to be nicer.”

Ms. Howard, who grew up just outside Washington, knew she wanted to work in the field even before enrolling at Pitzer College, in 2010. She likes talking with people, hearing their stories and aspirations. Her second day on campus, she applied for a part-time job in the admissions office, where she worked for four years. A gregarious tour guide, she enjoyed looking strangers in the eye. Now she does that and more for $40,000 a year.

Ms. Howard tries to adapt to each audience — one quiet student, 15 eager ones — delivering a 90-second rendering of Trinity, an urban liberal-arts college, before drawing them out. “Sometimes they want to hear stats,” she says, “but usually they want to hear anecdotes.”

Colleges crave data, and admissions officers must collect it. After each presentation, Ms. Howard jots down notes (size of the group, something a counselor said) to write an internal report. At schools and fairs, she collects inquiry cards, then tracks details like which senior emailed eight times in two weeks. That information shapes short-term communications plans, helps predict admission outcomes, and informs future recruitment strategies. In the age of big data, many crucial numbers flow from human interactions.

Humans, though, get tired. Last fall, when Ms. Howard’s journey finally ended, she had visited 55 high schools and attended 25 recruitment events. Back in Hartford, she put down her bags and opened her fridge, empty except for some yogurt and a lone onion. The next day she settled back into her office, where she also worked a Saturday shift, greeting families who rolled in. Trinity was counting on her.

Enduring a grind doesn’t make anyone a hero. Some admissions officers are attentive and helpful, even inspiring. Others are insufferable snots or just plain clueless. At least that’s what many seasoned college counselors say.

Admissions officers are widely seen as projections of what colleges value. A 22-year-old who spews statistics, bragging about a low acceptance rate, probably works for someone who hails such metrics, too.

Renee Wruck Bischoff, who welcomes about 125 admissions officers a year to her school in Ohio, sees three types. There are the graduates of highly selective colleges who end up scaring kids, she says, “by trying to make themselves sound so amazingly prestigious”; those who try so hard it’s creepy; and the best ones, who have honest-to-goodness conversations with students.

Ms. Bischoff, director of college counseling at the Hawken School, encourages her students to subvert “the baloney of the stump speech” that visitors often deliver. Over the years, she’s heard more and more reps who sound to her like salespeople. “By and large, they aren’t educators,” she says, “and they don’t seem all that interested in education.”

She’s sympathetic, though. A former admissions officer herself, she understands the job’s pressures and time constraints. “They get their marching orders,” she says, but not necessarily much else.

Aspiring doctors, lawyers, and teachers follow specific steps to enter their fields and advance. Yet there’s no prescribed route to admissions, no required certification. Most veterans say they just fell into their first position, bobbed around for a while, and decided to keep going.

But many who start out feel “stalled at the gate,” get discouraged, and leave, according to a recent report by the National Association for College Admission Counseling. It showed a high rate of turnover: Nearly half of employees 30 and younger either planned to leave admissions or were unsure about staying.

All that turnover has some benefits. With entry-level jobs opening up each year, twenty-somethings seeking a diversion before graduate school or another career can burnish their résumés. Colleges with tight budgets can bring in chipper, inexpensive worker bees to promote campuses that, in most cases, they already know.

But a revolving door harms the profession, says Carlos Jiménez, director of admission outreach and recruitment at Colorado College. He worries that creative thinkers and potential reformers are exiting the field before they might have a chance to lead it. “It’s sort of a waste,” he says.

The more experience a staff has, the greater its skills, the better service it will provide to students, Mr. Jiménez says. “The things reps say hold sway over the minds of 17-year-olds and parents.”

Since returning to his alma mater two summers ago, Mr. Jiménez, 34, has seen nearly all of its 14 recruitment positions turn over. “A lot of them were burned out,” he says. Replacing them has been time-consuming.

Admissions offices should do much more to cultivate — and keep — young talent, he believes. That’s why he revamped his office’s training program. Newbies get a spreadsheet with more than 50 tasks to complete (how to give an information session, how to conduct an interview). They’re given copies of the The Gatekeepers and news articles about admissions. And they’re exposed to the nitty-gritty of enrollment strategies. “I want to educate them from Day 1,” he says, “that this is not just shaking hands and telling stories.”

It’s an especially challenging lesson at tuition-dependent colleges that must scramble for applicants. “It comes down to, quite frankly, being salespeople, making the close,” says Karen A. Full, director of admissions at Ave Maria University, who trains her staff in how to build relationships with prospects, how to understand their needs, and how to handle objections. “That’s where it really gets tricky for many counselors.”

About a fifth of the admissions officers Phil Trout meets each year are brand new. That can make it hard to stay connected to a college. “Sometimes that connection can be invaluable,” says Mr. Trout, a college counselor at Minnetonka High School, in Minnesota, when explaining an applicant’s circumstances. In an increasingly mechanized process, it’s a chance for a real conversation.

Mr. Trout often asks a rep which two things his or her college likes to brag about. “They ought to be able to answer that right away, but some aren’t able to begin,” he says. “There are varying levels of training out there, and I worry about whether colleges are doing all they can to provide nurturing, role-modeling, and professional development.”

For all the information colleges gather on prospective students, it’s relatively rare for them to solicit evaluations of their reps. Of the 171 colleges that sent admissions officers last year to Minnetonka, fewer than 10 asked for feedback about their performance. Maybe that’s because colleges care more about applications and yield numbers — or know that many of their admissions officers won’t be back next year.

Each winter, many selective colleges rely on admissions officers to assemble the puzzle of institutional ambitions. Travel season gives way to reading season, when staffs sort through virtual heaps of applications. After all those weeks of motion and constant talking, they must sit still and be quiet. It’s the first step in selecting that all-important class.

Everyone has a strategy for meeting quotas during what Ms. Howard calls “the reading apocalypse.” In the busiest stretches, from early November to mid-March, she devoured 20 to 25 applications a day, seven days a week. She read from 4:30 to 10:30 a.m. at her kitchen table, a mug of tea steaming beside her. Scanning documents on her tablet, she scribbled notes to herself: academic achievement, a high school’s profile, what counselors and teachers wrote, so many tales of torn ACLs.

Catching a true glimpse of a student isn’t easy. Often personal statements sound numbingly similar. Ms. Howard plowed through numerous essays about students who, after sports-related injuries, found strength in cheering their teammates on — or those who had volunteered in Costa Rica or Peru. The essays that stirred her were about helping people across town, which seemed genuine. In such moments, she says, “a little beam of light would come through my window.”

When her momentum waned, Ms. Howard paused to remember that each file represented a living, breathing person. By spring, she had read hundreds, many from students she had met. She noted her recommendation, to accept or deny, on each file.

After the solitude of reading season comes the storm of committee meetings, when staffs weigh institutional wants and needs, discuss individual applicants, and decide whom to accept, deny, and wait-list. Although many young admissions officers have little or no influence over those final decisions, some get a say.

Ms. Howard did, and the intense discussions drained her. “There is yelling,” she says. “You take up your broadsword and put it on the table.” She fought for many applicants she had come to know. She felt an especially strong connection with one young woman, a low-income student who, despite an unsupportive family, had persevered in high school. Though the student had so-so grades, Ms. Howard persuaded her colleagues that she could succeed at Trinity.

As they deliberated, everyone in the room knew the stakes were high. Last fall the college, which relies heavily on tuition revenue, enrolled about 50 fewer freshmen (559) than it had the previous year. The shortfall contributed to a budget deficit of more than $5 million.

Ms. Howard had a front-row seat to the trade-offs an admissions office must make. She saw promising applicants who didn’t get a spot, in some cases because their families couldn’t afford to pay. That made her wince, especially when those denied were underrepresented minorities. “The feeling,” she says, “just sits in the pit of your stomach.”

One day last spring, Ms. Howard shared her feelings with Angel B. Pérez, Trinity’s vice president for enrollment and student success. She has known him since her time at Pitzer, where he led the admissions office for eight years. After Trinity had made its decisions, he recalls her saying, “I’m just not sure this is for me.”

Mr. Pérez, who was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in the Bronx, is an especially thoughtful advocate for underrepresented students. He understood exactly why Ms. Howard was upset. “Most people get into this because they love students, they care about access,” he says. “But then they pull back the curtain and see it’s a business, that colleges are admitting folks because they can pay.”

Enrollment managers must think constantly about net tuition revenue, making the best use of scarce resources, attracting enough affluent students. Still, Mr. Pérez worries about the toll that bottom-line decisions take on young admissions officers, especially those who are members of underrepresented minority groups themselves. “They can be the hardest to motivate,” he says. “If we don’t keep some of these people who get into this for the right reasons, I can see a future where people who hold my position all come from the business world.”

Years ago, after Mr. Pérez finished his first year in admissions, at Skidmore College, he told his boss he was quitting. He was tired and overwhelmed. She urged him to stay another year because one wasn’t enough to appreciate how and why the work matters. He soon came to see the big picture, how admissions leaders could help students find their way while also helping an institution prosper.

Now, Mr. Pérez tries to pass the lesson on. While chatting with Ms. Howard, he encouraged her to remember all the applicants from her territories who’d been accepted, some receiving scholarships covering the $60,000-plus annual cost of attendance. They discussed the delicate balance between institutional goals and altruistic ones. The talk helped, she says, though not as much as her gym session that night.

The incorrigible optimist had just confronted the duality of the profession. “There’s this beautiful, public-facing institution, the life-changing part of admissions,” Ms. Howard says, “and there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes.”

That glimpse behind the scenes turns many people away. Explaining why they left the field in recent years, several ex-admissions officers cite an array of frustrations. A lack of work-life balance. Few opportunities to move up. Scant training, especially in financial aid and working with diverse populations. Too little mentoring.

Maureen Yeung, a former admissions officer at the University of Florida, says some of her superiors took time to guide her. “But I’ve met people who quit because leadership didn’t even know their names on a staff of 10,” she says. “When entry-level staff gets treated like they’re replaceable, that’s emotionally draining.”

Some describe institutional leaders who are out of touch with the challenges many families face. “The higher-ups didn’t know that this dad lost his job last year, but we did,” says a former assistant director at a Northeastern college. “We were the ones getting emotionally invested.” She remembers receiving a call from a sobbing mother she knew, disappointed with the college’s financial-aid package. “I am so sorry,” she recalls saying. “I’m not the person. I have zero power.”

One former admissions officer describes calling scores of accepted students during evening phone-athons: “We had to become like a salesman, trying to convince parents to make $200,000 investments in a school they weren’t thrilled with.”

Then there’s the price of increasing selectivity. In an age of high-volume applications, the scale of rejection has changed. For every applicant a college accepts in a given year, a rep can rattle off five or 10 similar students who didn’t make it.

“You get jaded,” says Vivika Demel, 27, a former assistant director of admissions at the University of Southern California, where the acceptance rate has plummeted steadily, to 17 percent this year. “You’re constantly feeling bad about the literally thousands of kids you’re denying.”

Ms. Demel’s parents, who were born in Sri Lanka, couldn’t help her navigate the application process. She had no idea what a Fafsa was before connecting with an independent college counselor. The experience inspired her to work in admissions after graduating from USC, with a master’s in educational counseling, in 2013. She wanted to help students like herself.

On the recruitment trail, though, Ms. Demel heard a lot of sucking up. She met many “USC groupies” who swore they desperately wanted to enroll there but couldn’t explain why. Then, at a high school in New Jersey three years ago, she met a genuine young man who clearly conveyed his passion for the campus and why he wished to study communications there.

Later, Ms. Demel got chills when she read his application essay, written as a letter to his father about coming out. After the student enrolled, He and Ms. Demel stayed in touch, occasionally having lunch. In a blog post for USC, he thanked her for putting him at ease during the admissions process.

That story, she says, is an exception to the rule: “You often don’t know a lot about your students, because there just isn’t time.” Relationships that do form fade once acceptances go out.

Parents, however, are a constant. Admissions officers describe awkward moments, like when parents casually reveal they’re completing their children’s applications. Or when mothers call pretending to be their daughters. Over the years, several parents have sent Ms. Demel nasty emails. Some questioned her age and qualifications. “How,” one asked, “were you even hired?”

After two years, Ms. Demel felt far removed from the work she had set out to do. She left USC last fall to become a counselor at Santa Monica College, where she advises students on academic plans and careers. She likes the one-on-one interactions, helping others meet goals. And she’s making significantly more, she says, than her $43,000 salary at USC.

After four years in Champlain College’s admissions office, the work that once excited Sarah Hecklau had come to feel mundane. Though she prided herself on customer service, she found it harder to handle parents who called the office five times a day. “I was less inclined to be that super-bubbly admissions counselor,” she says.

Ms. Hecklau, 26, also saw widespread problems — student debt, socioeconomic inequality on campus — that colleges help perpetuate but can’t quite fix. “Very few have the tools or allocate the resources to do that,” she says. “There’s so much talk, but there isn’t a lot of action.”

Earning just under $38,000, she found the wide pay gap in higher education unsettling. “It really gives you a sense of being unappreciated,” she says. “It’s extra frustrating when the people at the lowest level are the lifeblood of the institution.” Now pursuing a master’s in education at the University of Vermont, she’s writing her thesis on how anxiety affects different players in the admissions process.

Above all, most of the former admissions officers recall a constant hunger for more applications. One who worked at a small private college remembers her supervisor’s delight upon seeing that most of the applicants she had interviewed while on the road — about 20 — ended up enrolling. Next year, she was told, make it 100.

Whatever the field’s challenges, some thrive on its pressures. Shaun Wright is a recruiter who loves his job. After graduating from Southern Utah University, in 2014, he started working for the institution as a regional admissions rep in Las Vegas. Now based in Provo, Utah, he puts about 15,000 recruitment miles on his Mazda 3 each year, zooming around the state with 50 or 60 pounds of marketing material in the trunk. Last fall, exhausted after six presentations in one day, he collapsed in bed, still in his work clothes.

Southern Utah wants to grow, so the admissions office recently embraced an ambitious recruitment plan and increased its travel budget, Mr. Wright says. That means visiting more schools, talking with more counselors. He welcomes that. “A lot of kids didn’t know who we were,” he says.

Competition buoys him. When he met his goal a few months ago of 185 enrollment deposits for this fall’s freshman class, he shared the news on Twitter. By early August, he had brought in well over 300. “I like being so aggressive,” he says. “It’s a personal up-yours to some of the bigger schools.”

Still, Mr. Wright insists that recruiting students merely for the sake of hitting a number is no good for anyone. “You’ve got to be genuine, show them you really do care,” he says. “I want students to come for their own reasons.”

Like many large public institutions, Southern Utah uses a clear-cut admissions index — combining grade-point averages and test scores — to evaluate applicants. Mr. Wright can tell someone exactly what he or she needs to get in. Often he advises high-school students on improving their study habits or overcoming their anxieties about college. “I’ll talk to them about their fears for the future,” he says, “and how I have those same fears.”

Mr. Wright, 28, thinks about becoming an admissions director one day. Still in an entry-level position, he makes $34,000 a year. The cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Provo has convinced him that, for now, he must continue renting, with roommates. During slower stretches, he has earned extra money waiting tables and mowing lawns.

Right now he can’t imagine quitting, but he’s not sure if he’ll really be an admissions lifer. “I don’t want to stay in this position forever,” he says. “I want to buy a house someday.”

In September, however, there’s little time to think past the next high-school visit. Another recruitment season’s in full swing.

At Trinity, Sophie Howard has been preparing for her second cycle. Over the past year she’s accepted more responsibilities, honing many skills. Recently she trained campus interviewers in how to interact with prospective students. Her best moments have been hearing high-school students get “crazy excited” when they get good news.

Meanwhile, she’s learned that rejection works both ways in admissions: The young woman for whom she fought last winter ended up enrolling somewhere else. She still thinks about her. “These kids, their experiences,” she says, “they stick with you.” She has come to see that the job’s greatest challenge is tempering one’s idealism without losing it altogether.

For every admissions officer who leaves, another soon arrives. Representing the University of South Florida, Logan Feinberg, 24, recently embarked on his first recruitment trip. Excited but nervous, he packed a handful of green-and-gold ties.

So far Mr. Feinberg has met dozens of students — anxious, confused, bursting with questions — at nearly 40 stops. Sometimes when he explains how to transfer, how you can’t major in being a doctor, he sees their eyes widen in understanding. “Those small wins,” he says, “give me adrenaline to power through.” For now, at least, that’s good enough to keep him going.

Eric Hoover writes about admissions trends, enrollment-management challenges, and the meaning of Animal House, among other issues. He’s on Twitter @erichoov, and his email address is eric.hoover@chronicle.com.