Exclusive Insider Interview: Assistant Director of Admissions, Carnegie Mellon University

SocratesPost: Deborah, tell us about your experience working in college admissions.

Deborah at Carnegie Mellon: I’ve been in undergraduate admissions for four and a half years. I’m an assistant director of admission at Carnegie Mellon. 

Our travel process is a little bit different. We don’t have territories. We actually just travel to new places every year, which is really nice, because I get to now understand the different school systems that are out there.

When it comes to actually reading applications we read by academic college within the university. So at Carnegie Mellon, you have to apply to specific ones. Every year, I read either the applicants for the College of Engineering or the Humanities and Social Sciences, or Computer Science. That way, you’re really getting to see all of the different students that are applying for that specific college. I also have a specific focus in the Fine Arts. And I’ve done that for the last several years.

Between traveling and reading, that takes up about half of the year. Within the Office of Admissions, my team focuses on on-campus recruitment events. So for the past year and a half, I’ve been responsible for 35 of our paid student ambassadors. We just worked to revamp the campus tour last year, responsible for their day-to-day activities. And then my team plans overnight events and then our info yield events. We spend a lot of time going over data at Carnegie Mellon. We love data, so we do a lot of strategic planning for the next academic year and do non-evaluate counseling sessions to answer students’ questions about the process.

SocratesPost: That’s perfect. In the last four and a half years that you’ve been working in undergrad admissions, and how long have you been at Carnegie Mellon?

Deborah at Carnegie Mellon: Three years.

SocratesPost: How do you think that admissions at Carnegie Mellon changed in the last three years you’ve been there?

Deborah at Carnegie Mellon: Good question. There have been a lot of changes. I would say, most notably, moving away from demonstrated interest in our admission process. Especially since Carnegie Mellon is in Pittsburgh, and it’s not exactly a waypoint for many people, it’s more of an intentional destination. Unlike a place like DC, Philadelphia, or Chicago, there’s not a lot of schools that would work. There’s not a lot of cross applicants with the other schools that are in the city of Pittsburgh. If you’re coming to Pittsburgh to visit Carnegie Mellon, you’re probably only coming to Carnegie Mellon.

SocratesPost: How does Carnegie Mellon view the fact that the campus is in Pittsburgh as a downside?

Deborah at Carnegie Mellon: We were finding that a lot of the students that were visiting us were more familiar with the college admissions process, whether they’ve had families who went to college and they had school counselors. And so we’re finding that there’s a huge gap, especially in terms of the needs of students who came and visited us. We really wanted to be conscious about eliminating some of these gaps in the applicants and we didn’t want students who were coming from less disadvantaged backgrounds to be held back in the admission process. So we took that out.

SocratesPost: What other admissions changes have you seen during our time as admissions director at Carnegie Mellon?

Deborah at Carnegie Mellon: We no longer keep track of students who come to campus or not. We also moved from evaluative interviews to non-evaluative interviews. We also stopped considering supplementary submissions and stopped accepting application updates, especially when it came to the waitlist. So that was all a big change in the process.

SocratesPost: What has been the response to all of those changes?

SocratesPost: What was the thought process behind moving from evaluative interviews to non-evaluative interviews?

SocratesPost: How did you find this information to make such a big change?

SocratesPost: That makes sense. And that’s really interesting, because in some of the other conversations I’ve had, admissions professionals would say every point of contact they have with a student, whether it’s an email, a phone call, a visit to campus to the office, is tracked. And it sounds like you guys aren’t tracking the interactions anymore.

SocratesPost: That’s interesting. What kind of data did your office collect to guide you into this new way of doing things of not tracking the encounters or campus visits?

SocratesPost: In these lengthy quarterly strategy meetings, what tools or software did you use to track admissions data and make changes to your processes?

SocratesPost: What other factors contributed to the changes led by the data you collected from that software?

SocratesPost: And why did you originally start using that data collection software if now you’ve realized it’s not a good fit?

SocratesPost: Now, that definitely makes sense. It kind of skews the student population of using the program. Earlier, you were talking about the waitlist and how you’re trying to make it more transparent and fair for the students. Can you tell me more about that?

SocratesPost: Can you give us an insider’s peek into what it’s like waitlisting students from your side?

SocratesPost: How many students did you admit off the waitlist this year? More or less than previous years?

SocratesPost: Sure. And everyone gets the opportunity. And aside from the additional prompts, how does the review process for the students on the priority list differ from the review process for regular application?

SocratesPost: Sure, okay. It’s because you have those initiatives to admit more women, so it makes sense that is something that you’d be looking for.

SocratesPost: That is interesting. Do you know how that individual got accepted off the waitlist so late?

SocratesPost: That’s good to know. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit more about you. Tell me, what do you think is a little known aspect of your job working as an assistant admissions director?

SocratesPost: It’s unique that you had that experience yourself as a homeschool student. And so when you’re connecting with students on the road, or if you’re meeting them, even just virtually you can share that you’ve been there.

You were talking about the thousand applications you read this season. What’s the story or essay or profile or individual that really stood out?

SocratesPost: Why do you think that student’s story stuck with you so much?

SocratesPost: When you read an essay or an application like that, are you also looking for clues that it’s authentic and that a counselor or consultant hasn’t helped with it too much? Or is that not something you really look for?