"Field Notes" is an occasional Connect column covering practical and philosophical issues facing admissions and registrar professionals. The columns are authored by various AACRAO members. If you have an idea for a column and would like to contribute, please send an email to the editor at connect@aacrao.org.
by Nancy Walsh, Director of Admissions Operations,Office of Undergraduate Admissions, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
As many of us in admissions know, developing relationships with high school and community college counselors can play a key role in our recruitment and outreach plan. Counselors can act as the frontdoor for connecting students to our campuses. The more knowledge the counselors have about our programs, the better the information they can pass on to their students. And, in exchange, admission counselors can reach out to their high school or community college counterparts if they have questions about an applicant.
Counselors can help advocate for their students and let admissions offices know if they feel that we have made an unfair or inconsistent decision. Of course, not all decisions will turn out in the applicant’s favor, but it is vital to establish such partnerships to ensure a smooth recruitment and enrollment process. I will walk through some of the ways in which my campus, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has developed programs specifically targeted for our counselors as we’ve also created a few tools to help ease their workload a bit.
Counselor Portals
Both high schools and Illinois community colleges have access to our counselor portals. Letters are sent to the schools (typically to the director of guidance) each year in early fall with a new passcode to access the portal for the upcoming admission cycle. We trust that the schools will only share the passcode with appropriate staff. If we find that a school has abused their portal privileges, the portal will be deactivated. Counselors have the ability to update staff information within the portal, upload school profiles and request materials. We use the staff information to feed into our CRM for counselor campaigns throughout the year (see more about that outreach effort below). We also include general information about application deadlines and decision release timelines. Aggregate data on the current cycle as well as the last four years are included, which details number of applicants, admitted, denied and enrolled from their individual schools.
Counselors have access to more specific information about their students who have applied during the current admission cycle. They can see if the application files are incomplete or complete, and we also share the final decisions once they are released to the students and include scholarship information if we have access to it. In addition, counselors can submit counselor explanation forms or application fee waiver requests through the portal. Those are automatically matched to the applicant file in our online admission system and processed appropriately.
Counselors no longer have to call or email our office to ask about the status of an applicant, nor wait for the paper list of final decisions through the mail. For the most part, the portal is accessible 24/7 throughout the admission cycle. The online submissions also negate the need for paper forms to be sent through the mail, so that should also be a time-saver for the counselors.
Counselor Advisory Boards
Each year, we establish both a High School Counselor Advisory Board and a Community College Advisory Board. Both boards consist of 10-12 members with the term typically a 2-3 year appointment. Our high school board mainly includes counselors from across the state of Illinois, but we also invite several non-Illinois counselors to join the group to bring a different perspective to our discussions. The community college board is exclusively representatives from our 48 Illinois community colleges.
Each board meets annually on campus in the spring for a day and a half of discussions as well as social gatherings at night. We find these visits to be a win-win for both sides. The counselors will learn more about our admissions process as well as receive important campus updates. We typically invite academic units, student affairs or other student-related groups to speak during the gatherings. Admissions staff use this time to reflect over the last year – what went well, what didn’t go so well. We also propose changes for our upcoming cycle to get feedback before implementing anything new which may cause consternation among our high school and community college partners.
Besides the annual meetings, we can also contact our boards throughout the year for feedback if it cannot wait until the gatherings. Having this type of access to trusted counselors in the field has really helped us improve our recruitment and admissions processes.
Counselor Luncheons & Mock Admissions
In conjunction with some of our academic units on campus, we typically hold two counselor luncheons in the Chicagoland area for our high school counselors. For these events, we make admissions and campus staff more readily available to counselors closer to their locations and for a limited period of time (plus, a free lunch!). Each luncheon is centered around a specific academic field and then we invite appropriate colleges or departments to speak at the luncheon, in addition to our office providing admissions updates.
We also provide Mock Admissions sessions to our high school counselors, which are usually held in June. Counselors can attend to learn about our freshman review process much more in-depth. One session is located on our campus and another remotely in the Chicagoland area. We hold a fast-paced review training session and then have the counselors review and discuss the files to see if they matched our actual decisions. We’ve also held one Mock Admissions session for our community college counselors, and we hope to expand on that in the future. These sessions help unveil some of the ‘mystery’ behind our review process.
Counselor Communications
As mentioned above, we collect counselor contact information through our portals. We then use the email addresses provided to send updates throughout the cycle to both high school and community college partners. These emails are typically reminders about deadlines and upcoming admissions events. We also use these communications to announce any major changes on our campus which could impact their work.