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

For those who do not work in admissions, the approach of autumn conjures up images of crisp, cool mornings spent raking leaves or tailgating before a college football game and the scents of apple cider and pumpkin pie. For admissions officers, however, fall means only one thing — travel season, the six to eight weeks between mid-September and mid-November that we each spend visiting high schools and attending college fairs around the country. We associate fall with endless hours spent in our inevitably large, white rental cars, with arriving back at the Hampton Inn after a full day only to forget which room is ours, with eyes straining for signs of a flagpole or football stadium to indicate we’ve located the high school we’re seeking, and, most of all, with the excitement of getting to know next year’s freshmen.

Many prospective students have already visited campus over the spring or summer, so some of the myriad faces we encounter each fall are familiar, but encountering students on their home turf is particularly rewarding and often much more memorable. When I first met Courtney, now a sophomore at Vanderbilt, she looked like an extra from Footloose, complete with side ponytail, legwarmers, and fingerless gloves. “It’s 80’s Day and I’m the class president, so I have to go all out,” she explained. My first interaction with Caleb was when he and the rest of the Testostertones (my all-time favorite name for a male a capella group) serenaded me in front of an entire college fair to demonstrate his love for Vanderbilt. Our visits often coincide with Homecoming week at many high schools, so I’ve also discovered the power of the rivalry between the women’s lacrosse teams at Charlotte Country Day and Durham Academy, the existence of the Coffee Pot trophy to honor the victor of the football game between Coffee County High and Tullahoma High, and the fact that St. Paul’s students are taunted for their supposedly wimpy pelican mascot.

Not only did these encounters permanently imprint the students involved in my memory, but, more importantly, they gave me invaluable insight into the culture, community, and values of each of their schools. What even admissions officers frequently fail to recognize is that fall travel is an educational opportunity for us as well as the students we are visiting. Understanding the school environments from which our applicants emerge is essential to the admissions evaluation process. Fall travel provides us the opportunity to talk with college and guidance counselors about what’s new at their schools, to tour high school campuses to get a feel for the resources available to students, and to spend time observing the culture of the schools we represent in the admissions process.

When I finally read Courtney’s application three months after meeting her on 80’s Day, I realized that she had been modest; she had actually been class president all four years of high school and 80’s Day was part of her idea for a theme week to raise school spirit. I remembered seeing posters advertising the various themes all over the school and that over half the students I saw in the halls wore 80’s attire, so I knew her counselor’s claims about her lasting contribution to the Dover-Sherborn community were true. My visit to St. Paul’s last fall came the day before Cricket Day, a surprise school holiday enacted one day each term. Only the heads of the school’s Missionary Society (a community service organization) know in advance when Cricket Day will be held, so when Megan whispered to me during the college fair that she wasn’t worried about getting her homework done that night since classes would be cancelled the next day, I understood the depth and significance of her involvement in the Missionary Society when she later mentioned it in her application. Talking with a faculty member at Phillips Exeter about their unique textbook-less math curriculum helped me to understand fully how a student might progress through the math sequence at his or her own pace and that only having one term of Geometry or Algebra II would not be unusual for a student able to accelerate through the sequence.

Having this firsthand insight gleaned from visiting high school campuses is invaluable in the application review process. As I read each application, I determine if each student’s coursework is among the most challenging offered at his or her school, what the school’s grading scale is like and where the student’s grades place him or her relative to his or her peers, and what involvement and contribution the student has had in the school community. Visualizing the school environment — the classrooms, the hallways, the student body, the physical plant — fleshes out the picture provided by the applicant, counselor, and teachers and provides the context for understanding his or her high school career. Earning frequent flyer miles, enjoying the fall foliage in New England, learning regional slang (though I’m still too Southern to pull off using “wicked” as an adjective), and discovering the small joy of hotels that give you warm cookies upon check-in are added benefits of fall travel season, but the real reason we pack up and hit the road again each fall is the chance to meet students in their everyday environments and to understand how those environments have shaped them into the people we get to know throughout the application process.

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Heather O’Neill is entering her sixth year with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at Vanderbilt University where she serves as Associate Director. Prior to coming to Vanderbilt, she received her master’s degree in education from the University of Iowa where she also worked in admissions, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 1st, 2005 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Admissions, Recruitment, Undergraduate.