Description:In recent years, Woodside Priory had been flourishing, however, our success exposed the limits/problems with our admissions process. How did we select the right kids from growing pools of qualified applicants? Did we have clear and consistent criteria to evaluate applicants? And did we even know what we were looking for in the first place? What we needed was a wholesale overhaul of our admissions process so that we could be more intentional about evaluating applicants, identifying successful ones, and making admissions decisions. Taking our cue from the Backwards Planning curricular work we had been doing in the classroom, we set out to identify what we were looking for in applicants, and designed our admissions process around that. In this session, we’ll talk about: the problems with our old evaluation system; how a faculty committee identified the qualities we were looking for in applicants; the rubric we created to assess those qualities in applicants; the changes we made to both our interview process and our decision process; and how the whole process changed the way we talk about the school with families.
AISAP Standard & Competency: Advance the mission of the school using best practices in admission andenrollment management.
Delivery Method: Interactive web seminar conducted online
Program Level: Mid-level Professional, New to Directorship
Presenter: Matt Lai, Director of Admissions and Financial Aid, Woodside Priory School
Bio: Matt Lai is the Director of Admissions and Financial Aid at Woodside Priory School, a 6th-12th grade Benedictine school in the San Francisco Bay Area. During his 12 years at the Priory, he has been the Dean of Students, Dean of Residential Life, a teacher, and a coach. He finds working in independent schools exciting, rewarding, and meaningful – far more so than his previous life working as a corporate attorney in Manhattan. Matt holds a B.A. and M.A. from Stanford University and a J.D. from Columbia University. In his free time, he enjoys running, spending time with his wife and son, cheering for the Kansas City Royals, and playing with spreadsheets.
Contact Info:
Matt can be reached by email at mlai@prioryca.org