How College Counselors Are Like Campaign Managers

As election week winds down, it’s worth considering the similarities between the campaign cycle and the admissions cycle. After all, the outcomes of both always cause fits of joy in some and feelings of despair in others. And both cycles inspire participants to put stickers on their cars.

Anyway, if you like extended metaphors, then Burke R. Rogers is your guy. Admissions officers, he writes, are like voters: “Some are fickle, but generally they want to make good and thoughtful decisions. Analysts have spent lifetimes trying to figure them out, but no consensus has emerged on what really makes them tick.”

Years ago, Mr. Rogers, director of college counseling at St. George’s School, in Rhode Island, started using political metaphors to help campaign donors (er, parents) understand what their beloved candidates (applicants) and campaign managers (counselors) experience while wooing those unpredictable voters in this great nation’s admissions offices.

Mr. Rogers has posted an enjoyable riff about this on the St. George’s Web site. Read it here.