Season 4: Episode 12 Transcript
One-on-One with the Nation's 'Chief Admissions Counselor'
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, and this is the Admissions Beat. This week we're trying a new feature, a one-on-one. And our first one-on-one guest is Angel Perez, the Chief Executive Officer of the National Association of College Admission Counseling, AKA NACAC to those of us in the biz. And while that sounds like a duck quacking, NACAC is the professional umbrella for over 27,000 admission officers and college counselors around the world. And Angel is our leader. So Angel, welcome to the Admission Beat, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.
Angel Perez:
So excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Lee Coffin:
You're welcome. And so Angel, you came to NACAC in 2020, right? In the midst of a busy pandemic year. But like me, you spent many years as my peer, as the vice president for enrollment and student success at Trinity College and before that, Dean of Admissions at Pitzer. And you bring that long history of admission leadership to your work at NACAC. Just as a way of starting us off, describe NACAC to people who may not have ever heard of it, high school seniors and their parents probably aren't dialed into the professional organization that undergirds this process. So what's NACAC?
Angel Perez:
Sure. I'm glad you asked that. It does sound like a duck, right? When you think-
Lee Coffin:
It does sound like a duck.
Angel Perez:
But we are the professional organization for admission officers, high school counselors, college advisors, basically anybody that does college access work is one of our members. And we're 27,000 strong, mostly in the US but also around the world. And we do the education and training for our members. We host big conferences, but one of the ways that many students and families know who we are is we actually host many college fairs, national college fairs around the country. So if you're interested in connecting with students in colleges, go onto our website and Google college fairs and we might be actually having an event in your area.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, what's the website?
Angel Perez:
NACACnet.org. So N-A-C-A-C-N-E-T.org.
Lee Coffin:
Thank you. There's news you could use for our listeners. I've done over my years, many, many of those NACAC fairs around the country and they're fun. I always would walk into those big convention halls, look from my table and be like, wow, this is a sea of high school kids grabbing brochures. But my tip to students who wander into one of those big fairs is have conversations with us and as you blow through the hall, don't just sign up and move, but spend some minutes having conversations with the admission people who are there because that's part of the fun of it and the opportunity to meet us one-on-one.
Angel Perez:
Lee, I thought I'd let you know we're also making it more fun in New York City this year. We had a silent disco party for the students, and so.
Lee Coffin:
Seriously?
Angel Perez:
I think it was called Dance It Out, Stress It Out to basically remind students to take care of their mental health during the admission process. So we're also trying to do some things that make it a little fun and a little stressful and scary.
Lee Coffin:
Of course you are, because that's your bit. It's not surprising to me that you started that in New York City because that's your quasi hometown. So on the NACAC website you introduced yourself as quote, "I grew up poor in Puerto Rico and the South Bronx." So New York is your people, and I love to invite guests to go back in time and reflect about your origin story as a high school senior looking out at your college options. So what was that like for you back in the day, Angel?
Angel Perez:
Yeah, thanks for the question. And I love talking about this because the reason I do this work really has a lot to do with the way that I grew up and the opportunities I had. I was first generation to the United States and first generation to college, and my parents moved to New York from Puerto Rico when I was very young with the very typical American dream. And so I grew up in the projects of the South Bronx. It was a tough time in New York City at the time. Lots of drugs, lots of gang activity. And so really my story is a little bit unusual in the sense that because of the kind of opportunity I had to education, I've really been able to live this life that I could never have imagined. And it was really a high school counselor who put me on a totally different path.
I have to say I did not grow up around people that went to college and certainly didn't have access to mentors that could walk me through that process. But one day, a high school counselor in my building, who by the way had 700 kids in her caseload, she had 700 students to take care of. But she stopped me in the hallway because I was delivering something. And it was to a certain extent, serendipitous. She said, "Young man, have you ever thought about going to college?" And that one question led me in a totally different direction and I think my answer was like, "Yeah, maybe I don't know, tell me more."
But from there she helped me to start learning a little bit about colleges and when they would come and visit the college center, she would physically walk me over to the college center and say, "You need to go listen to this admissions officer." So I always say that I owe so much of my life and the access I've had to things to that high school counselor, but also the admission officers who shepherded me through the process. I ended up at Skidmore College in upstate New York, and that was a transformative experience for me and it's why I love doing this work.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I'm smiling as I listened to that story because I had a similarly serendipitous reaction with the husband of my high school chemistry teacher who was a guidance counselor in another town. And Mrs. Maturo was driving me home from school one day—I did a makeup exam—and we were chatting about college admissions and she said, "Where are you applying?" I said, "I have no idea." I was at a big school, not very great counseling. And she said, "Oh, you should come over after dinner with your dad and my husband will kind of help get you on the path." And long story short, here I am. It was the same thing. It was like that intervention in a car ride home from high school opened a bunch of doors that I didn't even know were there and also inspired me to, yeah. And then you became an admission officer. How long were you in admissions before NACAC?
Angel Perez:
I did, I think I was in admission for 23 years before I came to NACAC and like many admission officers, I sort of fell into it. I was tapped on the shoulder by someone at my alma mater who said, "I think you'd be really good at college admissions." And I didn't think that people that worked at colleges had real jobs. So I was like, "Really? That's a job?" But then I realized I got to talk to students and recruit students and travel around the country and read applications and I thought that might be fun. And I said I would do it for two years and 23 years later I was still in college admissions. And technically I still consider myself in college admissions since I am in the profession.
Lee Coffin:
You're a hundred percent still in college admissions. You just have a macro seat instead of an institutional seat.
Angel Perez:
Exactly, exactly. And honestly, I've loved every minute of it. It's such a great profession to be in.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. So this podcast focuses on selective admission. It's been my experience, so it's what I talk about. But I understand that colleges that have a selective admission process are more rare than not in the big sweep of American colleges and universities. And you emerged out of that both as an undergrad yourself, but also the places where you worked in admissions. And I'm wondering how has your perspective shifted from being the dean or a vice president in a selective liberal arts college to now being the CEO of our professional organization? Do you see things in the selective world with a different perspective now that you're not embedded in it?
Angel Perez:
I do. And my perspective has shifted dramatically. And I think the way I'll start speaking about it is that my perspective has expanded. I don't think one system is better than the other. And I've gained a deep respect for the work that our members are doing, admission officers are doing, and high school counselors, in places that I could not imagine because it is not my lived experience. I'll give you a quick example. I was at the University of Wyoming and I went there to visit some of our members and actually a mentor of mine who is the dean of the School of Education. And I sat with someone in government relations and I said, "So who's your greatest competition?" Thinking through that selective lens, and I thought they were going to say Colorado State across the border or the University of Montana. And they said, "trucking companies."
The same high schools that they're admission officers are visiting are competing with trucking companies who are paying students because they need workforce. And they said, "The issues that you talk about in Washington D.C. do not resonate with us." And I'm still thankful for that conversation. I think I was a year and a half into the job, and it was really important for me to hear that depending on where you are in the country, depending on the student population that you serve and the kind of institution you are, your admissions process looks different. How you serve students looks really different. So I've loved learning about the different sectors. I do think it's important for our audience to know the majority of colleges and universities are not selective. The majority of colleges and universities admit the majority of students that apply to the institution. So it's very different systems, but I also think it's the beauty of our system in American higher education that we have a lot of different kinds of institutions, choices and processes.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, no, it's so interesting to hear you frame it that way. And it's not surprising. I've been a creature of these selective spaces since I was 18, so it is what I know. But I'm also reminded as I travel, it's funny you said Colorado, I was out in Denver visiting my nephew last month, and I toured Colorado State. I started poking around their website afterwards. I didn't know very much about Colorado State or even Boulder for that matter.
Angel Perez:
It's a beautiful place.
Lee Coffin:
Very beautiful. And it was a reminder too, if you just use the prism of selectivity, places aren't always as selective as the ones that are always in the headline, but they're outstanding. And I wonder what the word selectivity means to you today. Is it more of an aggravation or because parents, the press will tee up selectivity a low acceptance rate as the gold standard? I don't think it is, but it's the way the story often gets written. And I wonder how your perspective has evolved as you no longer have to manage an admission process directly.
Angel Perez:
Yeah, I think the word you use is appropriate, aggravation. It's not aggravation in the way our audience maybe thinks. I think it's aggravation because especially now with the seat that I'm in and the lens that I have, it's a lot of noise and it creates an extraordinary amount of anxiety for not even the American public, the global public, anyone who is interested in studying in the United States. And it makes it feel, given the way the media covers the stories, it makes students and families feel like getting into college is impossible. And the reality of the matter is that there are actually more seats than students currently, at least in the United States, because of our demographic population, there are more seats available than students think. Yet if you read any major news publication today, you would feel like, "Wow, I'm never going to get into college."
And there's so many choices. And Lee, I always say this to students, and I'm not sure if you feel the same way, but I loved where I went to college at my alma mater, and I'm grateful for that experience. But now that I know about so many amazing places, you were just talking about Boulder, I was like, "Wow, I could have gone to a lot of really cool places." And by the way, I'm not talking about the Ivy League, I'm not talking about the most selective institutions, but there are these amazing, beautiful institutions all over the country that I think could have served me well. And so I do think it's aggravating because there are so many opportunities I think students are missing by only focusing on selectivity.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I agree. And I agree As somebody working at one of the places you just referenced, I can see my job is to be the dean of admission for a specific institution and more broadly in a specific athletic conference. But I look around the country and see opportunity in so many places that gets overlooked. So stick with the media for a sec. So I would say when you were a dean and a VP, and certainly now you are one of my more media savvy colleagues, you know how to tell a story and represent our work to the press. Why do you think the media is so focused on the work we do in college admission? What's the catnip that animates that set of headlines?
Angel Perez:
Oh, it's actually quite easy. And the media reporters that I've spoken to have told me themselves, it is because it gets the most clicks and open rates and sells the most. These stories, I had no idea. Because she said this at a NACAC conference, I don't think she would mind me sharing it on your podcast, but Theresa Watanabe, who is the higher educational reporter for the Los Angeles Times, said to our audience, she said, "Our editors and our leaders at the L.A. Times want to focus more on college admissions because your stories get the most clicks." And so as a result, they're putting more resources, more reporting time into college admissions. And so I think it's important for the public to understand that.
And so to a certain extent, it's this vicious cycle that goes back and forth. But the other piece I think is because as a country, we are sort of obsessed with college admissions and it feels so secretive to the American public, and I blame us who have worked in the sector. I don't think we do a great job of explaining it, even though we have podcasts like yours that are trying to fight the good fight and help people understand the behind the scenes. But I do think there's quite an obsession in the United States with higher education, and particularly with elite higher education and selective higher education. So we sort of do it to ourselves.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, no, it's interesting. We had a guest, Emi Nietfeld, an author who wrote a memoir, "Acceptance," about her journey from being a homeless teenager in Minnesota, ultimately to Harvard. But why I referenced Emi is she talked really openly about seeing the Ivy League in her view as her lottery ticket, that if she could get to one of these campuses, she would have a safe space that she didn't currently have. And I think that also fuels this narrative where a lot of students around the world have that same aspiration, and it's a bit of mythology that it's hard to disrupt, I think.
Angel Perez:
And I wish to a certain extent, not that this would solve all of it, but that we would do a better job as a society, even just showcasing stories. I'm a big storyteller. I think it's very powerful showcasing stories of individuals who are incredibly successful and live these extraordinary lives who did not go to the Ivy League or selective liberal arts colleges. I always tell the story of the CEO of American Airlines went to Albion College in Michigan, little Albion College, a great place, small institution in Albion, Michigan. And a student goes there, has a transformative experience and becomes the CEO of the world's largest airline. But we don't hear those stories very often. But there's many stories like that, and I think the more we can do to connect people with those kinds of stories, I think the more success we'll have in having people think broadly about their choices.
Lee Coffin:
So let's take that comment and point it towards high school seniors. So we're midway through the fall, the deadlines, some have passed if you're in the early space, but the big deadlines still to come. How should a student and her parents be reflecting on a college list with what you said in mind? What advice would you give that family maybe gathering for Thanksgiving dinner soon and the topic comes up, "So where are you're looking at?" How do they stretch beyond what they know?
Angel Perez:
Yeah. Well, I think diversity is the key to a successful list. And I mean diversity of all types. You probably should be thinking about diversity of institutional type. You should be thinking about the diversity in terms of the size of institution or location, just being a little bit open-minded. Because what I've learned in all the years that I've worked with students on this process is that your thinking evolves even from November in your senior year to May when you are sending that check to deposit at an institution that you want to leave as much room for choice, if you will. But I will also say that a big piece for students to be thinking about, and I talk about this a lot more now than I did even a decade ago, is institutional choice and diversity around finances as well. Because really most families are in the United States and around the world need some sort of funding to help them afford higher education.
And so for example, applying to your local state institution knowing that you're probably going to get a state subsidy by going to this particular institution. Also applying to the dream schools or reach schools, I'm not exactly sure what the nomenclature is these days, but those schools that you really, really want to go to, maybe feel a little out of reach because they are super selective, but making sure that you also have diversity in terms of financial aid options, and then diversity in terms of selectivity. You don't want your entire list to be the Ivy League. First of all, that's a bad way to do it because every single institution in the Ivy League is different. So doing your research there is going to be critical as well.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, you're so right. I was at a program at Penn a couple of weeks ago, and as I walked around that campus, I thought "Same league, lots of kids put us in the same sentence, profoundly different places." So different. So different. I thought, "Why would anybody have a choice of Penn or Dartmouth?" Because they represent such fundamentally different things. So it is good advice to kind of back people up and say, "Keep your list as elastic and inclusive as it can be." Because I think that it's easy as the deadlines come to start crossing places off that seem like maybe I'm not as interested, you don't know what the spring brings and that epiphany of the accepted student program might engender. So let's go back to the Admission Beat for a sec. There's so many headlines right now that are grabbing our attention. And I wonder first as CEO at NACAC, you read the same stories I read. Do you ever catch yourself muttering to your phone or yelling at your screen about what you're seeing and what triggers you?
Angel Perez:
I think usually I'm triggered by the way the story's written.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, me too. Why so? Why? Yeah, I have that same issue, but why are you grumbling?
Angel Perez:
I think it's because you and I are insiders, right? And we know I think a couple of things, I might want to back this up a little bit. Part of it is that I'm an insider. Part of it is to be a hundred percent transparent, I'm very protective of the profession and the professionals who do the work. I really am a believer that the people that are working on these college campuses in admission offices are good people trying to do really good work, given impossible tasks every single year. And so when I see the profession or admission officers or a particular institution being beat up in the media, I get frustrated about that. I take it a little personal, but I think part of it is also, again, that I don't think what the media tends to focus on really helps young people and their families. I think it's distracting, and I think oftentimes it just exacerbates the anxiety that they are already feeling. And so that to me is why I get frustrated and sometimes put my iPad down and go for a walk.
Lee Coffin:
I'm right there with you. So let's pitch a story to our friends in the media. What would we like them to cover that would do the opposite of what you just said?
Angel Perez:
Well, I would love for them to cover in some creative fashion, a story that shares the plethora of opportunity and diversity there is in American higher education that students would never hear about, but they don't want to write about that because they don't feel that gets a lot of clicks. I also would love for them to write more in-depth stories about college affordability, but not in the way it's covered now, which is beating up colleges about how unaffordable they are, but really helping students understand and families, all the extraordinary resources that are out there for students to be able to apply for funding and all the kinds of things that institutions are doing to make it affordable. So I just wish that there was more. And by the way, this isn't just about admissions. I feel this way about general media. I turn on the news and I'm so depressed I just turn it off immediately. But there's also so much goodness happening in the world. You would never know about it though, because no one covers it.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. I catch myself wishing for more in-depth coverage that could illuminate the kind of things we cover when we do info sessions with high school students. And it takes an hour or more to have heads in the audience start to nod, as you described, this is how you read an essay. This is the value of that writing assignment. Here's what testing does as part of your application. And you see the aha happen, but it takes a while to get there. And I don't know how a story on the front page of a paper might do that, but it is the piece that I wish happened more than it does. But let's hit some of the topics because your seat at NACAC has to consider lots of the moving parts that swirl around us. And there's probably nothing bigger right now than the Supreme Court ruling from June 29th that removed race as one factor among many in college admissions.
And I've heard several legal experts give the opinion that that ruling hurts selective institutions more than less selective institutions on the theory that for places that are less selective, they weren't using it as overtly as a place that's shaping its class would be. But does that make sense to you? First of all, as you hear me kind of convey that legal insight?
Angel Perez:
It doesn't make sense to me-
Lee Coffin:
It does not.
Angel Perez:
Philosophically I understand why, right? If you look at who the plaintiffs were, if you look at the case UNC and Harvard, then you would think sure, those are really highly selective places. And so this is going to impact highly selective institutions. But I think especially now that I sit here at NACAC, I think of our system of higher education and college access as an ecosystem. We all impact each other. There's a trickle-down effect on institutions. And I think that the reason why I'm particularly concerned and know for a fact that this isn't just going to impact the most selective is I have been speaking to a lot of high school counselors whose main concern is the psychological impact that this is actually having on young people. And if you look back at what happened in California, when California had Prop 209, which actually eliminated the use of race in the 1990s, the year after that there were 40% fewer black and LatinX students on UC Berkeley's campus.
And a lot of that is attributed to the fact that students and families misunderstood the decision and decided not to apply. I can't tell you how many high school counselors are saying to me, "My students are coming up to me and saying that Supreme Court case that happened this summer, does that mean they don't want me in college?" And those students are fortunate that they get to talk to a counselor. Imagine the thousands of students that don't have access because of the caseloads to a counselor. And so I do think colleges and universities at all different levels, scales and different parts of the country are going to experience some sort of effect, particularly because of that psychological impact it's going to have on students.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Okay. So as the chief admission officer of the United States, that's not really your title, but I'm going to call you that. Make the case, Angel, reassure all the students who are listening who are worried.
Angel Perez:
Absolutely. I mean, the most important thing for students to remember this year is that colleges want you more than ever. And I will tell you, I speak to a lot of college and university presidents in this role, and every single one of them have said, "We are not turning away from our mission, which also relies on a diverse student body. We are doubling down on making sure that we have a diverse and inclusive student body. And what that means is we might have to do it a little bit differently and our strategies might have to be different, but we want to make sure that students feel welcome and included." And so this should not be, and by this I mean the Supreme Court case ruling this summer, should not be a reason not to apply. It should actually be a reason to get fired up and apply.
Lee Coffin:
And as they apply, what advice do you give students to use the application to introduce themselves in a race neutral space?
Angel Perez:
Yeah, I think there's a variety of different ways. A lot of students, at least what counselors are telling me right now, a lot of students are using the essay to talk a little bit about their lived experience. But I do want to give some advice there. I will say I was a little concerned, while I was very happy that the Biden-Harris administration came out very strong when the Supreme Court decision came down and said, "We don't stand with this decision. We want institutions to be diverse." But the president said that he wanted students to be able to talk about their adversity. And what I have been very clear is that I've had the honor of advising the Biden-Harris administration in this transition. I've been very clear that we should not put the onus on students here, that students should not feel compelled to tell trauma stories, adversity stories to get into college.
And hopefully as a dean of admission, you might give your own advice here, Lee, but that's partly what worries me. It's okay to share your story, whether it's through interviews, if an institution hosts those, or through your essay, if race is a part of your story, and if you feel like you want to share a little bit about your lived experience. But the advice I would give is that don't feel like you need to speak about adversity or tell stories maybe you're uncomfortable with in order to get into college. I don't believe that's what my admission colleagues are looking for.
Lee Coffin:
No, I am right there with you on that point. Adversity and diversity are not synonyms.
Angel Perez:
Exactly.
Lee Coffin:
And there's some overlap between the two, but it is not complete. And I think we would be moving down the wrong path if that was the way we framed the creation of our campuses just by saying, "Share your adversity with us" as opposed to "Celebrate you" is the way I've turned this around and said in other contexts, I've said, "Take an existential selfie. Who are you? What's important? Where do you come from? Where do you hope you're going? To what degree does your family background, your identity, your religion, your sexual orientation, all the different ways people have identities, map that out for us." And because the campus is richer when it includes all of these faces and ideas and backgrounds.
I agree. But this topic, it wasn't a surprise to me that the court ruled as it did. I kind of saw this coming for a bit. I will say to you as a sitting dean to someone who not that long ago, held the pen in the same way. It's hard. It is thinking about re-imagining some of the guidelines and it's hard not because race was the dominant factor in the way we did our work, but I find myself thinking a lot about race as an indelible part of someone's person. And the court saying, "Yeah, you can't consider that or you can't consider it unless somebody maps it out in language through the application." And some will do that, some will not. And to your point about putting the onus on students, the court permitting us to use life experience does point the story back to the student as the driver of that proposition. And I don't think that's fair, but I don't make the law.
Angel Perez:
Yeah, exactly. And I can't imagine the pressure that our colleagues in your role in other places as well are feeling. Because you also want to maintain your commitment to your mission and bringing in a diverse class and making sure that you have those rich classrooms with diversity of experience. But it is a little bit harder when you can't identify students. And I think what's frustrating and what we've all been frustrated about is the fact that the court says you can use information about a student's lived experience yet say this piece of the lived experience is not necessarily valid, if you will. And I think that's difficult because obviously we all know that any kind of identity we hold is a part of our lived experience. So students should continue to write about it, whatever it is they feel comfortable. But I did feel it was really important for them to know that they're not going to apply to college based on trauma stories or adversity. That is not what admission offices are looking for.
Lee Coffin:
So one of the other topics that has sprouted out of the student for fair admission case against Harvard is the preference for the children of alumni in an admission process. So children of alumni known as legacies and colleges have historically included that group in an affirming way to say, "We value members of this, we value a generational continuity on our campus." And that has now become a topic alongside the end of affirmative action. Where's this going, Angel?
Angel Perez:
Yeah. So I will preface this by saying I don't think I hold the popular opinion here, and I can already imagine the mail I'm going to get when I say what I'm going to say. But I personally think it's distracting. And what frustrates me about this particular topic is that once again, it focuses on a tiny subset of institutions and you have legislators, I mean, there've been proposals and state legislatures and here in Washington D.C. around legacy admission. And while I'm not saying that the issue is not important or that it may not have an impact on equity, what I am saying is it's a lot of energy for a tiny, tiny fraction of students who are in the pipeline to higher education. And so I always get very concerned, just like what the Supreme Court did, that we are legislating policy on college campuses and in particular on how institutions can admit their students.
And so again, I want to preface this by saying, I'm not saying that giving a preference may not be an equity issue. I am a bigger fan of institutions doing the soul-searching internally to have those conversations like Amherst College did, who came out publicly and said, "We are getting rid of legacy admission," for example. But I really would prefer that institutions did that work and created their policies as opposed to creating a national mandate, which really I don't think is going to have the biggest impact on college access. The biggest impact for college access is changing the way we fund higher education. But that's a whole other podcast.
Lee Coffin:
That is a whole other podcast. No, but I appreciate you saying that your position might not be popular. I, like you, with First Gen College, and I have pondered this legacy topic a lot, and I keep coming back, and it's not a topic I own personally, but I keep coming to it and saying it is a small cohort in my pool, in the national pool. And I wonder, so my unpopular comment in this space is institutions that set their own mission to me have the right to think about, "Do we care about generational ties?" And especially when they're not state institutions, if it's... So, anyway.
Angel Perez:
But one more piece about that. I've also heard from families of color who are also saying, "Well, now that we actually have another generation and we've gained access into these institutions, now you're going to take this away." So that's yet another framework to work with and an issue. So just like with everything in college admissions, it's complicated.
Lee Coffin:
It depends. Yeah.
Angel Perez:
Depends. It's complicated.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. No, well, I said to someone the other day on this topic, legacy is a lagging indicator. So it reflects the campus that was 25, 30ish years ago, not the one that is today. And when you think about the parents of high school seniors, they're increasingly people who graduated from high school and college in the mid to late '90s and early 2000s now. And you look at a lot of the campuses where I worked, they became much more diverse places during that era. So you're right, as we keep coming closer to the present, the diversity of higher ed is going to show up more and more directly in that legacy pool over time.
Okay. What do you think about AI, artificial intelligence? This is another one that a year ago, I don't know that I had ever heard of ChatGPT, and then suddenly everyone keeps asking me about the role of artificial intelligence in the creation of college admission essays. And I think, "Wow." So I don't even feel like I've done a full admission cycle with this on my radar, but here we are. So does AI make you worried or are you someone who sees it as just the natural digital evolution?
Angel Perez:
Yeah, I will say when I first learned about it, I was a little nervous. But I have to say I'm someone who really believes we probably need to embrace it. We should not be in denial and put our heads in the sand. It is here, it is here to stay. It will evolve over time. I'm certainly not an expert in it, and I haven't even played with ChatGPT enough to fully understand it. But I do recognize particularly admission offices and even school counselors are going to be using this in ways that we can't even imagine yet. And I will share, and obviously I won't say who this person is, but we have high school counselors out there that are responsible for writing hundreds of recommendation letters. And it's almost an impossible task. I had a counselor who said to me this year, "I said to ChatGPT, write me a recommendation letter for a 3.5 LatinX young woman from X town in California who does X, Y, Z extracurricular activities."
She said "it was really good. All I had to do was fill in the dots." She said, "I probably will never write a letter again." And that was a wake-up call for me. Like, wow, okay. And I'm not judging that in any way, shape or form, but I think there could be great things about it in terms of workload and really focusing on the things that matter. I've been following a little bit about how colleges are using this and how faculty are using this. And I heard a piece on NPR recently where a professor was basically using it in his curriculum and was helping students figure out almost the ethical implications of AI. And so I hope that in our profession, we would start dipping our toes in the water, figuring out how we might use it with an eye towards ethical implications and also with an eye towards equity and access to the systems that we are going to be creating. But wow, we are facing a future that I probably can't even imagine what it'll look like five years from now.
Lee Coffin:
I can't imagine what's going to be like a year from now. And I think it's also an example of high school students are probably more present in this space than we understand them to be.
Angel Perez:
And the young workforce as well. Your young admission officers will teach you how to do these things.
Lee Coffin:
I think that's right. That's right. And so they may have been using this organically for some time before the rest of us caught onto it. But I started my own thinking on this, around that I love to write, I love to read. It feels like an important human skillset. So my new question as I continue to think about it is, it a complement to that skillset? I don't think we want to replace it, but is it somehow a new way of maneuvering through this? But I don't think we have the answer yet.
Angel Perez:
Well, one thing I will mention is I did see an interview with the CEO of ChatGPT, who's very, very young by the way.
Lee Coffin:
Of course he is.
Angel Perez:
But he said something that just, it made me think a little bit differently. And he said, "when the calculator was invented, all of the mathematicians were up in arms and thought, this is it. Calculus is gone. We will no longer teach people math and institutions will get rid of their requirements." None of that has actually really happened, but it's become a compliment to these courses. And so he was using it as an example of how can ChatGPT become a compliment to the work that everyone is doing. So I have some hope that we will get there, but I think it might be a little bit of a bumpy ride in the meantime.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, that's right. Okay, let's talk about volume. I think one of the challenges of college admission, particularly today is the explosive growth of so many applicant pools and institutional appetite for more volume that then generates impressions of selectivity. And I wonder, again, outside of an actual institution, if the volume proposition of college admissions worries you, I've heard people say, "Oh, we've expanded access." I'm like, "Well, you've added volume to your pool." I don't know that we are always expanding access if those are the same thing. But is volume something that you see as a worry?
Angel Perez:
Yeah, I do worry about it, but on a lot of different levels. I think one of the ways that I worry about it is actually what it does for your staff, right?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Angel Perez:
There's only but so many people you can hire and every year budgets you get tight on college campuses and you want applications to be reviewed with a deep care that they deserve. And so the more you have, the more limited admission officers are. And so I worry about that. I worry about their burnout, their mental health in that kind of environment. But also I think a part of what I worry about is that, again, we're in a vicious cycle and we don't know exactly how to get out of it because more applications often tend to be celebrated until we get over our obsession with selectivity and admit rates, that is going to continue.
We haven't talked about rankings, but that certainly has a role to play. And an area that maybe the people who are listening to us may not know about is that colleges and universities are also rated by bond rating companies. And I still remember when I was an admissions dean and I used to meet with the CFO and Moody's bond rating and every year, and if my applications went down by a hundred, which by the way would be like a drop in the bucket, they would say, "Why is your market share going down?" So there are these external forces that are impacting selectivity. And so it's not as simple as saying we should just be less selective or not try to get more applications. There are rewards for institutions for getting more applications, but it has some really significant consequences, particularly for admission offices, admission officers, but also high school counselors who are just trying to do a good job of making a match and a fit with a student and predict as much as they can, where students might have a seat available to them. That's become really challenging over the last couple years.
Lee Coffin:
Well, I worry too that the Supreme Court ruling is going, it could boomerang in the other direction too, where people over apply thinking the variables have shifted, so let's flood the field with more applicants or maybe a few, same number of students play in more places in the volume surges again, and I come back to volume a lot because just using Dartmouth as an example, we've had a 35% increase that has held over the last three years. And at some point I look at the volume and I say, "We have so many more people than we ever need to fill our class, and where is the breaking point on this upward trajectory?"
And I've heard some say, "Well, maybe it's time to dismantle the college application process and pivot towards a lottery, where people put their credentials in the bin and randomly it's like the sorting hat and Harry Potter. It sorts you into the various houses and off you go. Or maybe it's time to replicate the med school process where you get matched." And the QuestBridge organization does it that way too. What do you think about the innovators among us, a couple of whom have been presidents of NACAC over the years? What's the end game here? Or it can't keep going up, up, up, up, up?
Angel Perez:
Yeah. I don't have the answer to that. And I worry because every year we feel like, "Yeah, we definitely have reached the ceiling." And then there's another record-breaking year and your admit rate is dropping, and high school counselors are frustrated and the media is reporting on it. So again, it's this really vicious cycle. But I do think there is a hunger and an appetite for change. I think the challenge is we all can't seem to agree on what that change would be. And you mentioned lotteries, and actually I was just at an event with the president of Colorado College, Song Richardson, who's amazing and wonderful, and one of the first presidents to pull out of U.S. News and World Report. So she's really bold in doing some brave things. And she talked a little bit about maybe we can experiment with a lottery system.
And while I think that's a really interesting idea from an enrollment management perspective, it is a very challenging idea. And that is because the majority of institutions in the United States do not have a 6% admit rate. And the majority of institutions in the United States have deep pressure to balance enrollment needs with financial aid needs and tuition needs. And so in order for you to bring in a particular class, you need a certain number of students who can pay that full tuition and certain number of students who can pay partial tuition and certain number of students that will be on full or partial financial aid, a lottery system is not going to help those institutions. They could actually really hurt those institutions. And so again, we go back to it's complicated, as with everything. But what gives me hope is that there is all the conferences that I go to and the NACAC community, there is this hunger for change.
We need to figure out how to do this differently because not only is it no longer good for institutions, it's just not good for young people and it's not good for their parents. And so we have to figure out a different way of doing this. And there's lots of experiments happening right now. There's experiments with direct admission, which wouldn't happen at a place like Dartmouth, but lots of institutions, some state institutions, the state of Wisconsin, for example, just said that they will be sending admission letters to high school seniors basically saying, "If you hit this mark and this mark, you're automatically in. You don't even have to apply." So there's lots of different ways that admissions is being tested differently, but we still have a ways to go.
Lee Coffin:
So Angel, we're talking about access and transparency. I mean, one of the things that you did while you were at Trinity that really jumped out at me was you were uncommonly transparent about the intersection of admissions and financial aid and the point you were just making about every institution doesn't have the resources every year to set the class in a need blind way or without considering the very pragmatic reality of here's the number of seats, here's the number of people we need to recruit. And it occurred to me as I was pondering this conversation with you, we haven't really touched need sensitivity as a topic on Admission Beat. And wonder, just as a concept to listeners who may be focused on need blind, the idea that a college reviews an application without considering a student's ability to pay, this is the opposite. So how should a family that is thinking about affordability or applying for financial aid or pondering selectivity, where does this fit into that arithmetic?
Angel Perez:
Yeah, I'm glad you brought it up because it is one of those topics that we need to talk more about as a society. The reality of the matter is the majority of institutions in the United States are highly tuition driven. What that means is that the majority of their revenue comes from tuition. And so we have set up a system in the United States that basically puts a lot of the burden on the student and the family to pay. And so the majority of institutions cannot just afford to admit everyone because they are qualified or cannot afford to admit everyone because they deserve a place. Most institutions also have to take a look at whether or not a student has an ability to pay. And most institutions have a financial aid budget and they say, "Okay, here's an X number of millions of dollars that we can give out in financial aid." Also known as subsidizing the cost of the education.
"But in order to do that, we need a certain number of students who can actually pay or at least pay partially." And so this is why they call admissions and art and a science. This is the science part of it that comes into play. And so it's really important for families to know that at the majority of institutions, that is a variable. And so making sure, again, if we go back to the conversation we were having earlier about diversity of your college list, making sure that you have institutions that you feel are also affordable with and without financial aid, and including some of those state institutions and thinking about scholarship dollars, because every year higher education gets more expensive. Every year, many states are providing less financial aid and subsidy for institutions of higher education. And so it's just important for families to know it's not impossible. And believe me, there are millions of dollars out there for families to be able to afford an education. But keeping costs top of mind is critical.
Lee Coffin:
And if you're a parent and you listen to this, you say, "Oh, most of the places on my daughter's list are need-aware or need sensitive. Should I be worried as the dad or mom making that discovery? Or is this just a good thing to be aware of but not to be worried about?"
Angel Perez:
Yeah, I wouldn't worry about it because you have no control. And I know that mom and dad, that is not what you wanted to hear. The reality of the matter is that's a behind the scenes thing in terms of how the institution operates. I will say, I've worked the majority of my career at places that were tuition driven. And if you were admitted and you were a rockstar student, you were probably getting the best financial aid award out there in the country. And there were students who literally came to our institutions for free. And so there's lots of opportunity there. But again, I think the key to success is a diverse list of institutions so that not only are you weighing admission offers in the spring, you're also weighing financial aid offers and making the best decision for you.
Lee Coffin:
So as we wrap, I want to invite you to give some closing advice to the high school class of '24 and their parents. From everything you see as the CEO of NACAC, what words of encouragement or reassurance do you have to the jittery kiddos navigating the fall of their senior year?
Angel Perez:
I think I have two things I'd like to share. One is this is an extraordinarily exciting time to be a high school student in transition to college. There are so many options out there. Again, if I were to go back, I'd do it differently. And I would think about all the exciting options that you have, including gap years, including different programs and service programs. And so keeping an open mind and instead of just focusing on the anxiety or the stress, also celebrating the joy of having so many choices before you, I think oftentimes that gets lost in the messaging. And then the other piece is, I would say try as much as you can not to listen to all of the noise. You and I talked a lot about the media and the anxiety that it produces.
Colleges and universities want you to apply. Colleges and universities want to admit you. Colleges and universities are excited about you becoming a part of their community. So really, there's nothing different you need to do this year. You just need to focus on your studies, focus on the work that you've been doing, and present your best self in the application. And once you press submit on that application, let it go. I'm a firm believer after so many years in this profession that what is meant to be will come back to you.
Lee Coffin:
Amen. Well, Angel, it's been great to catch up and I knew that you would join the Admission Beat and have a lot to say and you did. And it's always fun to bat around these ideas and topics with you. So thanks so much for being my guest on Admission Beat.
Angel Perez:
Thanks for having me. Keep up the great work.
Lee Coffin:
Thank you. We'll be back next week with another episode of Admissions Beat. For now, this is Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thanks for listening.