Ray Diffley
Director of Admission
Choate Rosemary Hall, CT
Member of AISAP Board of Directors
At the AISAP Institute I piloted an assessment tool to better define qualities and characteristics and assess for them in admission officers. The goal is to use this tool to better match applicants for admission jobs and perhaps, the school offering the job. I've been talking about this for years since the success of the work I have done at Choate with applicant self -assessment. I figured if it can help kids better see about compatibility for an environment, then why not adults?
For some time I joked (although there's always some truth in gest I believe) that there would soon be an eharmony.com or match.com for admission and frankly audiences could relate to that concept easier than other ways I had tried to describe match making before.
Well, just last week I was barreling down I-95 South listening to my newly acquired (trial period) Sirius radio on a business channel when low and behold, I heard news of eharmony entering the employment match- making business. This news, in my mind, meant it was seemingly just one step away from the world of education, which typically follows the business world by a few years, if it does at all. That said, what do you think? Are there matches made between student and school that might be better informed through an algorithm or self assessment, or is this just another money ball metric that ignores some of the time tested evaluation tools we currently use? I'd love to hear from you since I hope to have an admission officer assessment in play one day soon!