Leading a small and scrappy, but mighty(!) admission team in a saturated market of well-known and highly respected independent schools, we are constantly brainstorming ways to diversify our process and collaborate across our greater Institutional Advancement team to showcase different aspects of our program and to set ourselves apart from our competition. Through a survey we sent to prospective families, we were surprised to learn our applicants were interested in hearing more from our alumni during the admission process. It only makes sense. Alumni represent what schools provide (college outcomes, professional trajectory, personal qualities, growth, etc.). We tried out some cost-effective and low-lift initiatives to see how alumni could benefit our admission efforts, and how programs like this could strengthen our connection with our graduates.
Alumni Conducting Admission Interviews
We initially offered two Saturdays during the admission cycle where alumni came to campus and conducted interviews throughout the day. Since COVID, our interviews have moved to Zoom, which has made it even easier to involve alumni, near and far, as interviewers can log in from anywhere. We require that alumni be five years out from graduation to give them gravitas to our prospective families. We train them in a Zoom session and provide a folder of resources that includes anonymized sample interview reports, a video of a mock interview, and an updated list of FAQs and happenings around campus.
The benefits have been greater than we could have imagined:
Last admission cycle, alumni conducted almost 150 interviews. With a steady increase in applications, our small team was concerned about keeping up with the demand. Our alumni interviewers have been the solution.
Since the interviews are on Zoom, we have been able to offer many interviews on evenings and weekends when alumni are available. This creates a more equitable admission process for families who are unable to miss work/school to manage the myriad of admission requirements, particularly if they are applying to a handful of schools.
● It enables us to remain connected with alumni even if they aren’t local, which is a group that has fewer opportunities for engagement.
● Prospective families have reported feeling fortunate to have alumni interviewers, being incredibly impressed by what they’ve accomplished post-graduation. They also note that our school is the only one where they have had that opportunity.
● Simultaneously, alumni have shared how much they enjoy having an easy way to give back to our school community and remain connected to their alma mater. It’s a bonus they also feel impressed by our applicants - boosting their pride in the institution!.
Alumni Speaking Opportunities
We realized we have alumni that are doing impressive things that would be beneficial to showcase. We now invite alumni across all graduation years, pursuing a variety of paths, to speak during all-school-meetings on our admission revisit days each spring. The benefit is twofold: alumni appreciate being recognized and spotlighted and our community (including newly-admitted students) is enthralled by these speakers. The latter is evidenced by the number of students who stay long after the presentations to ask questions and introduce themselves to the alumni guests.
Similarly, we host a Zoom panel of young alumni (currently in college) during the admissions process as an added bonus for prospective families who are eager to hear from a unique constituent group. Again, this allows us to tap non-local alumni and strengthen their connection to our school while they are in the young alumni phase (a time when you often lose contact with new graduates).
Alumni Personal Outreach Emails
Each fall, we work with the Alumni Relations team to identify a handful of young alumni to solicit as volunteers to send welcome emails to prospective students and offer themselves as a resource if they have any questions. We aim to have a group of volunteers that are involved in a variety of ways in our community and have different passions. This enables us to make strategic connections with prospective students who might have similar interests. An unexpected perk of these connections has been that our alumni often learn from prospective students how interested (or not) the applicants are in our program. It’s a great way for us to manage and strategize around potential yield.
These are just a few of the most successful ways that we have engaged alumni and spotlighted a constituent group that isn’t often highlighted during the admission process. This has been a significant win for our admission efforts and has been greatly appreciated by our Alumni Relations team as well.
Nastaran Hakimi
Assistant Head of School for Enrollment Management and Institutional Advancement
Boston University Academy