Contributed by: Heather O’Neill
Associate Director of Admissions, Vanderbilt University

As the ball drops in Times Square and Dick Clark yells out “Happy New Year!” I smile and exchange kisses and high-fives with my friends, but inevitably I feel a tiny hint of dread invade my otherwise joyful heart. The turn of the new year brings me that much closer to January 3, Vanderbilt’s deadline for freshman application submission, and the awareness that reading season will soon be in full swing again. Though I have yet to experience childbirth, I imagine that it’s something like the application review process — the ultimate outcome (a new baby, a freshman class) is so captivating, so exciting that you immediately forget about all the pain involved in producing it and vow to do it again as soon as possible.

The pain associated with the application review process stems from the fact that all of us in admissions love working with high school students. We enjoy getting to know them during such a turning point in their lives, guiding them in making what is, for many of them, the first major adult decision of their lives, and reveling in all the possibilities for what their lives will become (a veterinarian who plays jazz trombone on the weekends, designs uniforms for the New York Knicks, and builds and flies her own plane — why not!). Unfortunately, the reality of our job is that we must deny admission to a large number of these wonderful human beings who have let us into their lives during the past year. At Vanderbilt this year, we will likely turn down two-thirds of the students who have applied for admission. Most of these students have compiled records that would make them successful students at Vanderbilt and certainly records that we would be immensely proud of, were they our sons and daughters. There simply is not room to admit them all, and therein lies the pain.

The review process begins in earnest each January and continues until we mail out all Regular Decision notifications at the end of March. Each fall Early Decision serves as our practice round, a time for new and experienced readers to warm up and calibrate together. Early Decision applications constitute roughly 10 percent of our total number of applications at Vanderbilt, so the Early Decision review is a mere sprint in advance of the marathon ahead at Regular Decision. From January through March, we will spend most evenings and weekends reading applications, a sacrifice that most of our family and friends cannot understand. Fortunately, we have our colleagues with whom we can share stories about obscene essays or odd teacher recommendations or students who insist on spelling Vanderbilt as Vanderbuilt, despite the fact that the name of the school is printed all over the application.

The occasional malapropism or humorous extracurricular activity (my all-time favorite is the student who founded the Big Eaters Club so that stressed out students could pig out together one night each week at an all-you-can-eat buffet) helps me to keep a sense of perspective on the application review process. It is tempting to imbue our process with too much authority, relying on it to separate the wheat from the chaff, when, at best, it is just one set of values and priorities imposed to create order out of the chaos. I like to think that our holistic review is superior to a process that admits students simply by their test scores, but who is to say which is more fair? We approach each file as a puzzle, attempting to fit all of the pieces together into a cohesive whole that will give us the complete picture of the applicant. We look at the student’s grades and curriculum to see if he or she is taking the most challenging courses available and what those grades mean relative to his or her peers’ performance. We compare the grades and curriculum to the student’s testing to see if he or she is under or over achieving in the classroom and we incorporate the letters of recommendation to bring life to the numbers, to understand how each student learns and participates in the classroom. The letters of recommendation frequently help us to understand what kind of community citizen the student has been at his or her school and what his or her involvement has meant to the school. We read the essays to hear the students’ voice and perspective and to gain insight into the person behind the grades and scores. Ideally the disparate pieces will come together to form a complete picture of the student’s time in high school, explaining any discrepancies in grades and testing or any blemishes on the transcript, so that we can make a case for admitting the student.

It is easy to read too much into the application and to get too attached to the person we have created in the file or not attached enough when the file comes across as flat or uninteresting. It is difficult to remember that we are making decisions based on the ten or fifteen pieces of paper in each applicant’s folder, that some students have access to experienced college counselors who can help them mold and shape the impression we receive from those ten pieces of paper and that others are left to their own devices. That is why it is essential for us as admissions officers to meet these students once they arrive on campus, to get to know them as three-dimensional people, and to be mindful that those few pieces of paper will never tell the full story. Three years ago we admitted a student whose application I read and thought was fairly average, though the grades and testing warranted admission. He is now one of the most prominent student leaders on campus, a voice of reason and maturity with more intellectual curiosity and a better sense of humor than I ever saw in his application. Another student that we were not able to admit stayed in touch with me during her first year of college, at first because she was interested in transferring to Vanderbilt and later to let me know she had decided to stay with her current school. Her life was none the worse for not attending Vanderbilt. We do the best we can to balance students’ welfare with institutional priorities and it is painful for us to fight for a student’s admission and lose, but by connecting with current students, we can put our review process in perspective and remember why the pain is worth it.

Contributed by: Dr. Jean Norris
Managing Partner, Norton Norris, Inc.

A colleague and I were reminiscing the other day about college admission counseling and the changes throughout the years. It seems like you can’t get through a week without hearing about unethical admission practices or a school on probation or losing accreditation. Although many stories focus on the proprietary sector, it certainly isn’t exclusive. Both of us remembered the late ’80s when we worked as admission counselors in the not-for-profit sector. You remember… before the Department of Ed stepped in and banned incentive compensation and for-profit colleges weren’t really viewed as competition. The funny thing about those days is even though we were paid to enroll students, there wasn’t a soul we worked with that would put their personal gain over the needs of a student.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not promoting the idea of going back to paying commission based on enrolled headcount. I am advocating, however, the concept that someone in the role of helping people change their lives might actually derive benefit from helping someone. Instead, we’ve put admission personnel into a no-win situation and made their job something to be feared. They have to think about everything they say or didn’t say. Could the prospective student have misinterpreted something? We listen to their telephone calls; assign them lofty enrollment targets; send them to training; bring in compliance officers to audit recruitment materials; and are frugal with their pay. All the while, they are still accountable to the higher ups to bring in academic quality and a specific volume of new students.

No wonder it’s hard to find good admission representatives and keep them. I imagine a job posting that looks something like this:

WANTED: High-energy individual who desires to meet with prospective students and their families to explore their options on purchasing a five-figure, non-tangible item. Qualifications require the ability to balance faculty desires for high-ranking students with enrollment management mandate of volume. Requires long hours, including weekend and evening work in a position that has little control or respect but responsible for the fiscal stability of the institution and all employees. Benefits include sleepless nights, travel to exotic locations (including Dubuque, Iowa), and the opportunity to have a television producer pose as a prospective student and secretly film you (on a particularly bad day) to showcase your admission counseling skills on national television.

In the end, I don’t think the issue of ethical behavior has anything to do with whether an admission counselor is paid for enrollments or not. I also don’t support that this is simply an issue of the for-profit sector (the desire for student revenue has universal appeal). I believe it has everything to do with the individual integrity of the person in the job supported by the ethical values of their institution. Perhaps we need to reexamine our intense focus on compliance and expand the view to include real leadership. After all, following the letter of the law does little to promote true ethical behavior. Let’s get back to the days of solid values and integrity that are owned, supported, and promoted by employees at all levels. Perhaps then, the stories in the news will focus on the positive model higher education administration has set for others to follow.

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Dr. Jean Norris has worked in higher education for the past 17 years in a variety of senior-level positions for both proprietary and not-for-profit colleges. Currently, Jean is a managing partner leading the training and assessment division of Norton Norris, Inc., a Chicago-based marketing consulting firm specializing in Tactical Enrollment Management®. Jean is frequently called upon to present in national venues including the American Marketing Association, the National Association for College Admission Counseling, the Career College Association, the National Small College Enrollment Conference, and the Community College Enrollment Management Symposium. Recently published works focus on admission training and ethics in college admission counseling.

Contributed by: Dr. Jonathan Byrnes
Senior Lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
President, Jonathan Byrnes & Co.

What are the essential qualities of an effective leader? Can these be recognized in young people? Can they be developed?

These questions were the topic of a meeting I recently had with a top admissions officer of a leading graduate school of business. This official was reflecting on the profile of applicants to be accepted in the school. She wanted to be sure that this profile was the most appropriate one, and not take anything for granted.

Great leadership seems easy to recognize, and you usually can tell when someone is lacking in leadership qualities. But how do you define it? This is a critical question both for selecting and developing your subordinates, and for developing your own leadership capabilities.

Here’s a definition of leadership that has stuck with me: Leaders are “people who leave their footprints in their areas of passion.”

Not surprisingly, I heard this definition in a presentation given by the admissions officer and a colleague of hers. And, in fact, this admissions officer was showing leadership by inviting me and others in to talk about admissions profiles: She was taking an already excellent process, and rather than being complacent with it, she was making it even better. She was leaving her footprints in her area of passion.

Some companies have a culture of relentless, almost compulsive, improvement. No matter how good the company is, it should be doing better. It reminds me of a Smithsonian exhibit on American ingenuity, “If We’re So Good, Why Aren’t We Better?”

By contrast, other companies are smugly stuck in the past. I remember one vice president telling me that his company was doing everything right because “if there were a better way, we would have found it, and we’d be doing it.”

The lesson: When you have the lead, step on the gas. After all, that’s how you got there.

In recent columns, I explained the nature of paradigmatic change in “The Challenges of Paradigmatic Change,” and described how to manage it in “Manage Paradigmatic Change.” In this column, I discuss the nature of effective leadership, and outline how you can develop it in yourself and others.

Ambidextrous leadership
In a sense, great leaders have to be ambidextrous. On the one hand, they have to be able to execute capably within the current business paradigm, “the way we do business.” On the other hand, they must be able to reflect on the current paradigm, find ways to fundamentally improve it, and manage the large-scale change to a successful conclusion. You need two hands, and a lot of commitment, to change the propeller on the airplane in mid-flight, but that capability is the essence of successful leadership.

Think of it this way: Someday your current job will be a line entry on your resume. Under the entry, you’ll have two or three bullets to describe your major accomplishments. “Did a good job of doing what always was done” can’t be one of them.

“Doing a good job of doing what always was done” is the ante; it’s what you have to do to keep the job. The bullets, your major accomplishments, come on top. They are your successes at changing the current paradigm, and this is how you showcase your leadership.

By the way, there is a lot of power in reflecting at the beginning of a new job on what you want the two or three bullets to be, and deliberately setting about building them over the course of your job tenure. Otherwise, you run the risk of having them simply be the incidental byproduct of what opportunities happened to come your way.

Can you be a good leader without being a good manager? In my experience, the best leaders are also great managers, and the best managers have strong leadership capabilities. To be successful, you must have both a passion for improving your organization and the capability to drive your efforts through to completion.

It certainly is possible to team someone who likes to change things with someone who prefers to manage stability. In fact, the most effective teams have one person who constantly pushes the limits and another who constantly ensures that the organization doesn’t blow up. The former winds up going slower than he or she would like to, the latter winds up going faster than is comfortable, and the compromise is great for the company. However, both members of the team need to have the full capability to manage ambidextrously. Otherwise, they will not have the common understanding and mutual respect to agree on the compromises necessary to create an effective course of action.

Managing the day-to-day, which is the core requirement of any position, is no small task. It requires that you produce consistently good results, meet objectives, and constantly “tune up” the business processes that you’re employing. Success involves competence, ability, and teamwork. You can and should derive a great deal of satisfaction from doing a good job at this, but don’t mistake day-to-day management for leading paradigmatic change.

Leading paradigmatic change.
Quantum change management is very different from day-to-day management. It involves conceptualizing and creating fundamental improvements that change the way business is done. For example, finding ways to improve customer service levels, like order fill rates, is a day-to-day accomplishment, while developing and implementing intercompany operating ties, like vendor-managed inventory, is a quantum change to the way that business is done.

In order to lead paradigmatic change, you need eight essential characteristics. These characteristics are over and above your day-to-day capabilities and the domain knowledge you need to analyze what to do.

• Capacity for passion. First and foremost, you need a burning drive to make things better. Change management is a grueling process, and passion will see you through it. Some managers just seem to have “fire in the belly.”
• Perspective. In order to convert passion into action, you must be able to “step back” and “view” what you’re doing even while you’re doing it. This is what the admissions officer was doing when she was reflecting on whether the admissions profile was correct, even while she was busy with her day-to-day activities.
• Creativity. Once you have a perspective on your business process, it takes creativity to see fundamentally new and more effective ways to do things. Some people are more naturally creative than others, but you can get your creative juices flowing by surveying a variety of business practices in a variety of companies. In good measure, business school case studies offer this perspective. So do business magazines and other publications.
• Organization skills. Leading major change requires both soaring creativity and mundane practicality. You have to translate a broad vision into a very well organized, practical, step-by-step program. Otherwise, people won’t have the confidence needed to let go of the old “tried and true” way of doing things.
• Teamwork. Virtually all major change involves engaging, persuading, and working with other people. You have to have the organization’s best interests at heart, and really be motivated to make things better for those you seek to lead. With this attitude, and a good practical plan, people will be inclined to follow you.
• Persistence. After passion gets you started, persistence is what carries you through. I can think of several brilliant, creative, passionate managers who came up with great ideas but lost interest when it was time to slog through the implementation. Ultimately, they designed great plays but they never put the points on the scoreboard.
• Open-mindedness. Large-scale change necessarily involves a good measure of learning by doing. By definition, you’re sailing into uncharted waters. A good leader needs a high level of tolerance for ambiguity.
• Integrity. Last, but by no means least, leaders need integrity. This doesn’t just mean not breaking the law. That’s honesty, which certainly is an important component of integrity. But integrity goes beyond that. It is a matter of being genuine, being motivated by your deeply held values to make your organization and your coworkers better off. This is where the passion, persistence, and teamwork come from. Without integrity, you’re simply promoting yourself, and people will not follow your lead.

Can leaders be developed?
Like anything else, leadership ability is distributed throughout a population. Some people are “natural” leaders, others prefer to operate capably within a well-defined context, and many people are somewhere in between.

Natural leaders have important core abilities, but they often need careful training in the more practical aspects of converting a creative vision into a concrete program of action. Very often, they need to understand the length of the change lifecycle so they don’t underestimate the importance of persistence.

Most people, however, can develop their leadership skills by working at it. The process starts with the recognition that leadership requires “ambidextrous” activities. The first hurdle is recognizing that excellence at the day-to-day is critical, but it is not enough. The second is the need to look inside yourself and decide whether you are willing to be uncomfortable for a prolonged period while you conceptualize and lead the change. The ultimate reward is the deep satisfaction that comes from seeing something new that wouldn’t have been there if you had not created it.

Once you decide to become a leader, you can develop the characteristics you’ll need by being thoughtful about the accomplishments that you want on your resume, and deciding to devote the time and attention needed to achieve them. Like anything else, practice makes perfect.

To be a great leader, you need a certain level of intellect, but not necessarily great genius. You need a certain level of social skills, but not necessarily those of a great salesperson. However, you do need a compulsion to operate at two levels: to be a great doer, and a great reflector.

Most importantly, to be a great leader, you need to find what you really like. That’s where the passion, commitment, and integrity come from. In my experience, the most important underlying factor in leadership is whether a person has searched out and found a great match between what’s in his or her heart, which is what he or she really enjoys, and the work situation.

Think about the definition of leaders, “people who leave their footprints in their areas of passion.” It’s easy to focus on the first part, how to leave footprints. But the real power comes from the second, working in your area of passion.

How can you recognize leadership potential in a young person? The most important clue is whether the person has identified and sought out a work situation in which he or she feels real passion. If a person doesn’t have the drive or ability to get his or her own situation right, how will he or she be able to do this for a company? If you’re doing what you really like, you almost can’t help but feel passion toward making it better.

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Copyright © 2005 Jonathan L. S. Byrnes. This article was originally published in the September 6, 2005, edition of Harvard Business School Working Knowledge (HBSWK) newsletter.

Jonathan Byrnes is a Senior Lecturer at MIT and President of Jonathan Byrnes & Co., a focused consulting company. He earned a doctorate from Harvard Business School in 1980 and can be reached at jlbyrnes@mit.edu. You can read more of his articles on his web site.

Contributed by: Ross Lenhart
Senior Vice President, Stein Communications

Southern Seen, Meditations on Past and Present
By Dr. Larry T. McGehee, Vice President and Professor of Religion, Wofford College

Wofford College and its students have been fortunate indeed to have Dr. Larry T. McGehee strolling around its beautiful tree-lined campus since 1982. My first recollections of Larry were in the mid-nineties when both of us were Davidson parents. We talked at several parents’ weekends, and I can recall sitting several seats over from him at commencement when both his daughter and my son graduated from Davidson in 1997. I looked for him during those times, because Larry is the type of person who would always provide me with something of interest, some valuable nugget for me to take away and catalog in the back of my memory. Oftentimes, he imparted such wisdom with a twinkle cloaked with a dash of humor that even made it all the more worthwhile. When Wofford became a Stein client and I would visit the campus often, I would naturally look for Larry. I do not remember ever passing through the Wofford gate without bumping into Larry somewhere or sometime. Once, after a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Atlanta, there he was, standing in the admissions parking lot as if he were waiting for me — but it was by pure coincidence and I was privileged. Several years ago I found out, not unsurprisingly, that Larry had a newspaper column called “Southern Seen” published in approximately one hundred newspapers around the country. The column was also on the Wofford web site, which allowed me to tune in — it was like eating popcorn — I couldn’t stop. Then one day last year, Brand Stille, Director of Admission, informed me that Larry had published a book available in the Wofford bookstore. I had to have it. Brand got it autographed for me and sent it on.

Southern Seen covers many subjects, but at its core, it is really about education. The book through Larry’s lifelong travels is about one generation educating another to the culture, the ideas, the beauty of nature, the humor, the total American experience not just Southern, the art, and the strong ties, which makes his own family relationship strong. This is accomplished not through dogma sometimes termed as “family values,” but through the discussion of real ideas, a letter to his daughter, the encouragement of reading and of books, and respect for one another no matter what the age. I am intrigued by the lack of geographical sectionalism displayed in this work in spite of its title, Southern Seen. It is obvious that Larry McGehee is a man who understands the total American experience, has transcended sectionalism, but who, as a typical Southerner, can write with soul and strong emotion. His insight into the prejudices of the great geographical national divide is worth contemplating. Southern Seen covers places and people, some of whom I have known coincidentally in my own career. His love for his own alma mater, Transylvania, is evident and strong. Everything from proms to athletics to historical personalities to everyday people emerges to keep the pages turning. As a person who traveled with my wife and boys up the East Coast often stopping and touring places like Williamsburg and Gettysburg, I loved Larry’s descriptions of his own family treks with his wife and daughters giving me insight into our everyday vernacular, phrases like “three sheets to the wind,” or “hickory dickory dock.” His natural historical and cultural curiosity is so contagious.

Yes, Southern Seen is really about education. I have always been convinced that those particularly in college admissions, advancement, or alumni relations must have a strong understanding and curiosity about the people of America — who they are, where they are going, and where they have been. It is obvious to me that Larry McGehee has that breath of insight, that wisdom, that curiosity, and the wherewithal and wonderful ability to put it down.

Yes, I will continue to drive through the gate at Wofford and look for Larry, because if I happen to bump into him — and I will — there will be always something of wisdom, of value — freely given with a twist of humor with a twinkle. Who could ask for more?

Are you passionate about the admissions counseling profession? Do you have a great story about students you have impacted? Would you like to be included in the only book of its kind?

Dr. Jean Norris, well known for her work in advocacy of the admission counseling profession, seeks nominations and submissions of college admissions counselors for inclusion in a book promoting the profession. If you, or someone you know, has worked in the profession for a minimum of two years, has an interesting story and would like to be considered, please contact Jean Norris directly at jean@nortonnorris.com.

Stein welcomes J.D. Fite!
J.D. Fite joined Stein in January and will serve as both a marketing consultant and project manager for our clients. Most recently, J.D. was the Communications Director at Marist School in Atlanta. He played an integral role in the school’s re-branding effort; managed and executed all levels of the school’s communications efforts; and brought in more than $1.5 million in grants. J.D. has received numerous awards for the Marist publications he created, and he is a presenter at CASE. J.D.’s ability to communicate what is special, inspiring, and of unique value in a particular school comes from his own love of learning. He has a B.A. in philosophy from the University of the South, and an M.A. in film studies from Emory University.

Emory & Henry College web site named #1 in Holston Conference!
The Holston Conference, which includes organizations affliated with the United Methodist Church, recently announced their top five web sites out of 250 member sites. The sites were ranked based on site navigation, content, design, and interactivity. The Emory & Henry College web site was selected as #1.

In addition to the list of current news and events, here are the aspects of the web site that the Holston Conference liked the most: “The navigation and organization helps every visitor connect with the college through easily visible links labeled ‘For Parents,’ ‘For Visitors,’ ‘For Current Students,’ ‘For Faculty and Staff,’ and so on. The photo images on the home page change with every reload, and the structure is simple, attractive, and colorful. Enhancing the site’s interactive nature are prominent links for online application, scholarship calculations, donations, and information requests.”

The admissions section of the web site incorporates PersonalizationPlus, Stein’s robust web site personalization and contact management application. To view Emory & Henry’s admissions section, go to http://admissions.ehc.edu.

Rob Glass named member of GFIC Board of Trustees
Having served as Chair of the Georgia Foundation of Independent Colleges Board of Directors, Rob has accepted the responsibilities of being placed on the GFIC Board of Trustees. A well deserved recognition for his service to the private colleges and universities within Georgia. GFIC information can be seen at http://www.georgiacolleges.org.