Monica Inzer needed a summer job. So, for a few months before her senior year at Skidmore College, in New York, she worked as a tour guide for the admissions office.
Inzer, then a soccer player majoring in English, hadn’t ever given admissions work much thought. But she enjoyed chatting with prospective students and their parents. And as the first in her family to attend college, she found promoting higher education meaningful.
Then, after graduating, in 1989, Inzer stuffed her belongings into a gray Volkswagen Quantum and drove to Allentown, Pa., excited to become a full-time admissions officer at Muhlenberg College. Still, she figured she would stay in the field for just a couple of years.
But Inzer ended up sticking with the profession for three and a half decades. She spent the last 20 years at Hamilton College, in New York, where she helped guide the institution’s decision to eliminate merit aid, in 2007, and to become need-blind in admissions, in 2010. Inzer also led a sustained and successful push to increase funding for financial aid at the college, and she helped create Hamilton’s Student Emergency Aid Society.
Inzer, who ultimately became vice president for enrollment management at Hamilton, has long been a respected member of her campus and her field, known widely for her clear-eyed perspective on admissions and financial-aid issues — and for her skill in communicating the complexities of the job. “One of the reasons she’s so influential,” the then president of Hamilton told The Chronicle in 2007, “is that she’s a rare combination of being data-savvy and people-oriented.”
Hamilton recently announced the creation of an endowed scholarship in honor of Inzer, who retired at the end of June. While packing up her office, she took a break to discuss college access, the challenges enrollment leaders face, and what sustained her for the last 35 years.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Many admissions officers leave the profession after just a few cycles. What made you stay?
Early on, I just was hungry. I just wanted to learn. I was lucky to be at a place that was also hungry. Muhlenberg, a little regional school, was trying to figure out how to make its mark. It wanted to do better, and it did. And I was part of that. That experience taught me a lot about data, reaching out to people, and how to spread your message. And I had great bosses.
You were the first in your family to attend college. How did that shape your work?
So much of what happened to me was a happy accident. Maybe it was also hard work. I was focused and ambitious, and some of that might have come from being a trailblazer.
Our first-gen students today are trailblazers. They’re doing something different than other people in their family did; they’re paving their own path. They don’t always have the toolkit to go with it, although colleges have gotten much better about helping to provide scaffolding for them. But at the time, when I went to college, we didn’t even talk about “first-gen to college.” So I didn’t carry that badge. But I do think I carried that spirit, which was, “I’m gonna do good stuff.”
I knew that education had changed my life. Caring about — and providing — this opportunity has been part of what has fueled my career. And a lot of it is about financial aid and providing access to students who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity.
But more importantly, it’s been about being the bridge between students and their future, helping them figure out what that is, and trying to help them de-stress. This process has become more complicated, more nuanced, more difficult to manage for families, and for us. But that has always been part of why I’ve stayed with this.
You worked at several other institutions before coming to Hamilton, where you helped shake things up. The push to eliminate merit aid and go need-blind in admissions brought national attention to the college. What was that like?
When I first got to Hamilton, the college was need-sensitive and had merit scholarships. I had worked at colleges that were need-blind, but “gapped” students. At those institutions, we thought we were doing the right thing by admitting students regardless of their financial need. But then … we didn’t meet their full need.
Back then, Hamilton met full need, but when it ran out of money, it ran out of spots for students who needed money, because the college was need-sensitive. At the same time, the college was trying to entice students who didn’t need money. So I was like, wait a minute, the difference between the kid we’re not admitting because he needs financial aid, and the student we’re giving merit aid to because they don’t need financial aid, is razor-thin. The challenge for me was: How do I navigate this?
What did you have to navigate?
The faculty said, “Merit scholarships are how we get the smartest kids in our class, right?” And I said, “Actually, we’re not admitting the smartest kids because we don’t have enough money.” It was a real challenge to try and convince this community that merit aid, in fact, wasn’t what was getting us the smartest students, and that having more need-based financial aid would help us do that. And that turned into people saying, “What do you mean, we don’t have enough financial aid?” And that helped us open the door to the conversation about need-blind admission.
How would you describe the impact of those moves?
Transformative. Not just in terms of how we make admission decisions, but also how we see ourselves as an institution. It was a point of pride for our alumni that helped the advancement office raise money for something that we believe in. Our reputation improved in ways you can measure, like rankings, not that we wanted to do anything for rankings. But the fact is, we were perceived differently in that moment because we put a stake in the ground for access. And it attracted employees.
There are things that data would tell you to do that aren’t aligned with the place you are or aspire to be.
Other things changed, too, in the career center, in the programs we put in place to help students who come from uneven backgrounds. It really helped the college think about how to support students. So, many boats rose because of this decision. Sure, you want students with high test scores, more students from further away, and who are more diverse and whatever else. But we also wanted to admit the right students who are a good fit. And we saw all of those things improve after this decision.
One challenge is that everybody wanted us to be the poster child for need-blind admission, and I really didn’t want to be. There are so many colleges out there that aren’t need-blind, colleges that are doing so much important work for access. But this was right for Hamilton, given where we are with our finances and our DNA as an institution. Need-blind admissions wasn’t the goal. Access was the goal, and this was just a tactic to get there. And then protecting that commitment over time has been an honor and, sometimes, a challenge as well.
What do you mean by “protecting”?
Well, maybe “protecting” isn’t the perfect word. It’s more about proving the wisdom of the decision, or assessing it to ensure that it still is the right thing for Hamilton. You know, institutions like to move forward a little bit on a lot of fronts — academic quality, diversity, athletics, whatever it may be. It’s rare that you take one thing and make it more important than everything else, and Hamilton did that. This college really went wild for it.
But then it became a “now what?” Can we still pay people? Can we still attract the best faculty? And will students who don’t require financial aid still want to come to Hamilton? There’s need-blind, and there’s need-reckless. We have to strike a balance: We don’t want to just raise our price so much to pay for this. We need to raise more money and allow more of our financial aid to pay for this. So there’s a decision, and then there’s the follow-up after that, which is being responsible about how you implement that decision, and sustain it over time.
Today about 20 percent of students at Hamilton are eligible for a federal Pell Grant. What do you make of that percentage? How does an institution know what that number should be?
It is unique for each institution, and it depends on what your resources are for financial aid, how you’re going to support students and help them with other things that aren’t billable expenses that they may need.
We were 11-, 12-, 13-percent Pell before we went need-blind in admissions. Since then, we’ve gone up significantly. Our senior class, which is very large, was the first class that we admitted during Covid, and our yield [the percentage of accepted students who enroll] went way up. It’s the most socioeconomically and ethnically diverse class we’ve ever enrolled. It’s 22 percent Pell.
And that class had different needs. It’s hard to say if it was because of Covid, or because the class was more diverse socioeconomically. But the dean of students’ team, when they came back from Covid and they saw that the class was larger and that the class had different needs, they said to me, “We’re crying ‘uncle’ over here. We have amazing students, but they need a lot of support. If you did this four more times, we’re not sure how we’re going to support our students.”
And, fair point. We don’t want to tip the scales so much that we can’t support the very students that we hope to attract. So one in five feels, roughly, right for us. We’d like to grow that over time, but we’re also trying to balance lots of other things that aren’t financial, to have students from different backgrounds who can learn from each other. A different school might have a different ambition.
What do you wish more institutional leaders understood about the work enrollment leaders do and the metrics associated with it?
Good admissions outcomes don’t make a great college; great colleges result in good admissions outcomes. Too often, because the admissions office is the front door, people look at those results as the thing that’s going to save a college. At many institutions, net tuition revenue and enrollment do drive a place being successful, of course, and I don’t mean to minimize that reality.
But my point is that all the attributes of a college — how students are supported, the quality of the faculty, the academic programs, the facilities, the co-curricular programs that make an experience impactful for students — all those things help the admissions office more than the admissions office might help those things. Institutional leaders should not lose sight of that.
There’s no secret sauce. There are families who ask, “What’s the one thing you need to do to get into college?” There is no one thing, and you can do all the right things and still not get into your dream college. So just have lots of dreams, and make sure you have more than one.
But the same thing is true on the college side. There aren’t a lot of rabbits in the hat. There are levers you can pull, but any strategy has to be aligned with your mission. There are things that data would tell you to do that aren’t aligned with the place you are or aspire to be.
Speaking of data, what does Hamilton’s data say about its test-optional policy? Have you considered reinstating a testing requirement?
I’ve been a supporter of testing throughout my career. Before Covid, Hamilton was test-flexible: We gave students a menu of choices — SAT, ACT, SAT IIs, Advanced Placement exams — for scores they could submit. But we were not test-optional, because we had found that testing is a good predictor of success.
Then Covid came, students didn’t have access to testing, and going test-optional was the right thing to do. Then we had more applicants, more diverse applicants, more first-gen applicants, more Pell applicants. I couldn’t have predicted just how much more diverse our pool was going to get by removing that barrier. Now that we’ve been able to study it, we can see that the majority of our domestic students of color, first-gen, and Pell-eligible students are applying test-optional.
Just have lots of dreams, and make sure you have more than one.
Bringing that requirement back certainly would shape our applicant pool differently. That’s something we’re studying, along with how students are doing. The students who didn’t submit test scores are slightly behind those who did, but the difference is not significant.
“Slightly behind,” in terms of their grade-point averages?
Yeah. All of them are doing very well. The difference between those cohorts is very subtle.
So many challenges are boiling over right now: The public’s waning faith in higher ed, the continuing federal-aid crisis, the demographic cliff. It’s a daunting time for enrollment leaders.
Many people have said, “Oh, my God, you’re getting out at a good time.” But I’m actually going to miss figuring out how to navigate these challenges — they make us creative and better. Our board is often very happy with our results, and I say, “Well, remember, we’re one year away from a bad year.” And I always thought that if I live my life thinking that way, maybe it’ll never happen.
All these challenges are significant, but it’s not like we haven’t had challenges before. Higher ed will navigate this because the world needs us to.
I’ve written about the intense challenges and pressures driving some people out of the enrollment field. Some early- and mid-career folks wonder if they can keep doing this. What would you want them to know?
I would say to them that this is a good way to make a good living, but it’s also a good way to make a life. Some of my closest friends in the world are people I’ve met through this work, including my husband, who have done a lot of good for a lot of students. I find myself leaving a community that I’ve loved more than any other community I’ve been part of. I have been supported, but more importantly, I feel like we’ve done well for the students who have entrusted us with their lives.
And so I wish that for others. I want them to stay and make the field better and make a difference, to have that feeling of satisfaction on the other side of doing a job like this.
