Blogs - AISAP

Setting the Stage: The Art of Authentic School Tours

By Claire Vaughn

Enrollment management is a dance of purpose, promise, and experience. As admission professionals, we stand on the front lines of portraying our schools authentically. The school tour, the moment where families immerse in the ecosystem of your school, plays a pivotal role in setting expectations. Today, we delve into the importance of providing an authentic tour, laying emphasis on transparency and honesty. The Authentic School Tour: A Mirror, Not a Billboard Billboards are for highlights and brief messages. However, a school tour is not a billboard. It should be a mirror, reflecting the reality, nuances, and values of the school. Authenticity means showcasing ...

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Does Harvard Really Care About Diversity?

By Shuja Khan

Even when a Supreme Court decision seems clear about what it wants, that doesn’t mean their decisions always conform to expected outcomes. In 1986, the Court ruled in Batson v. Kentucky that prosecutors were not allowed to strike potential members of a jury because of race. The intended outcome of that decision was to eliminate all-white juries. As a result of the Batson rule, a Court decision that was designed to create more diverse juries, juries actually became less diverse. DA’s were then trained to stop mentioning race. No matter how preposterous their reason for excluding a juror, as long as they didn’t say race, there was no issue. The funniest ...

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Embracing Belonging

By Janice Crampton

As we embark on a new year of membership with the Association of Independent School Admission Professionals (AISAP), I am thrilled to welcome each of you to the exciting journey ahead. The theme of “Belonging” is one that I hope will guide us and resonate deeply within our community: At AISAP, our mission is to empower and educate professionals in the admission and enrollment field and foster an environment where every individual feels a strong sense of belonging. With that in mind, I want to dive into why we strongly emphasize this aspect and how it shapes our daily, weekly, and monthly engagements. Every Day: Nurturing a Culture of Inclusivity Belonging ...

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Tips for Low-Anxiety Board Presentation Preparation

By Jennifer Webb

Board presentations can be a source of anxiety for admissions and marketing professionals. We are currently at a time of the year when we find ourselves in the boardroom presenting how enrollment goals were achieved or missed. Regardless of which you are presenting, the board wants to know that there is a sustainable future for the institution, given enrollment is the largest revenue generator. Board agendas are often packed, so professionals typically have about fifteen minutes to present the institution's sustainability. No wonder these presentations can be anxiety-provoking! To help reduce some of that anxiety, here are some tips to guide you through the practical ...

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Are Admission Professionals Adrenaline Junkies?

By Sindy Udell

The cycle of an admission professional can be compared to many things. I like to think of it as a long hike up and down a mountain. The hike often starts off flat where we have lots of energy and excitement for hiking up a beautiful mountain on a crisp autumn day. We are well-rested and hydrated. Just like the beginning of the admission cycle, the summer is over, kids are back in school, the weather is nice and we are ready to start the admission season. We have a marketing plan in place and we are thrilled to start the journey of another admission season. Inquiries start coming in and the possibilities of how we are going to shape these classes seem infinite. ...

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The Moral Imperative of DEI

By Shuja Khan

There was a time when the words “government housing” didn’t conjure unfair and wildly distorted images of graffiti-covered walls and rampant crime. In post-World War II America, “government housing” meant simply that there weren’t enough homes available and the government was going to build some. The housing was generally well made and, even more importantly, the government-subsidized loans made them affordable. Initially, all that housing was integrated – factories needed as many workers as they could find and issues of race took a backseat. The segregation came later (as did the myth that the segregation we continue to see today is the result of individual ...

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How To Ace It as a One-Person Marketing Team

By Kevin MacNeil

They say there’s no “I” in team… but what if the team is only you? Marketing teams (and budgets) at private and independent schools are often small or under-resourced. According to our 2021 State of Independent School Marketing Survey , 29% of all private and independent schools – and more than 50% of schools with less than 300 students – have a single person responsible for marketing. The most common? 60% of private elementary schools and 31% of day schools report having a one-person marketing department. If you’re juggling marketing strategy and implementation on your own, that’s trying to do a lot. Here are some key tips to help maximize the impact ...

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7 Questions For New Private School Enrollment and Marketing Directors

By Mike Connor

It's tough to step into a new role - we know, because we've been there! Our partner Mike Connor from Connor Associates has too, and is here to offer some advice in the form of seven key questions to ask to ensure you're getting started on the right foot. Congratulations to all of you who this year are entering the two best jobs a school can offer. I’ve been there! Looking back, here is some hard-won advice to make sure your journey is as rewarding as mine was when I was in the trenches day to day: 1. Is Everyone Aligned? If you are new or even a few years into the job, assess the authentic identity of your school. There is typically a “confluence of congruence” ...

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3 Steps to Connecting and Enrolling Families

By Toni Kanzler

After 24 years working in finance, I transitioned to private school admissions in 2006. School leadership thought this was a good idea but I had serious doubts. After all, I was an accountant, not a salesman. This was a new position, so there was no one to train me. Trial and error became my best friends. Those first few months of parent inquiries and tours were interesting, to say the least. I read up on persuasion techniques, diving into the benefits, and features of private education and our school in particular in each meeting. This approach brought moderate success, I think, in spite of my efforts to “sell” my school. Over time, I realized that sharing ...

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Vulnerable Leadership: Sign of Weakness or Essential to Success?

By Sam Geisler

Leaders are strong. Leaders are brave. Leaders are stoic. Leaders cry sometimes and talk about hard, personal things. Wait, what? That can’t be right. Or, can it? When I was hired to head up the Admission Office at my alma mater in 2013, I was excited and terrified. As that collision of emotions leaked out of my eyes in a “what have I gotten myself into?” conversation with a trusted mentor, she advised me to watch Brené Brown’s TED Talk on Vulnerability – if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend YouTube-ing it. What my colleague and Brené helped me embrace and understand, is it’s okay to feel uncomfortable and uncertain, and to even embrace that feeling ...

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Does “Fit” Still Fit?

By Beth Whitney

I must have used the word “fit” a dozen times a day for the first twenty years of my career in enrollment management. But lately, I am rethinking its use in the realm of admissions (and hiring, but that is a topic for another day.) To me, “fit” conjures the image of trying to stuff something inside a box or filling up container as much as possible while not stressing its perimeter. It is not a far leap from there to recall outdated adages about education being the filling of a vessel. Most educational institutions have strategic plans to ensure that they are constantly learning, growing, and aligning themselves with evolving best practices. Our schools are ...

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What a Minor League Baseball Team Can Teach Us About Student and Parent Experience

By Angela Brown

Much has been written about how quickly the education landscape is changing, and that pace of change has accelerated significantly during the past few years. Regardless of where you may stand with current enrollment, as schools seek to evolve and adapt to what the market demands, an intentional commitment to student and parent experience will be critical in the years to come. And inspiration can come from unexpected places. Whether or not you’re a baseball fan, the Savannah Bananas are a name you should know. Why? Because day in and day out, the team is providing a real-time masterclass in delivering remarkable customer experiences. Their players aren’t ...

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The Culture Specialists

By Steve Salvo

Are you currently experiencing enrollment management challenges? There can be many reasons for this, from shifting population demographics to enhanced competition or concerns related to tuition or your perceived value, but I believe the most underrated and potentially impactful driver of unmet enrollment goals is simply factors related to SCHOOL CULTURE. More specifically, culture as it relates to the experience your students and families feel on a daily basis. You can implement a new content strategy with a high-functioning website and great user experience, but if your culture stinks, well,...good luck. Too many enrollment management plans I see contain ...

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Marketing Your School During a Recession

By Trevor Waddington

In the summer of 2008, I moved from Philadelphia to Washington, DC, for a new directorship in admission and marketing. By October of that year, The Great Recession had a grip on the nation. In a bedroom community of realtors and financial sector employees, the effects devastated the schools in my area. If you lived through that and the COVID-19 Recession , you are battle-tested. But those recessions came on in a flash, and quick decisions had to be made. Now, you have the chance to plan for what seems inevitable. Don’t take it from me, though. There is a 98% chance of a global recession Almost every CEO in America is getting ready for a ...

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We Get By with a Little Help from Our Friends

By Nastaran Hakimi

We all become admission professionals for different reasons – perhaps it’s simply an accident, or we are lifelong tour guides, or it’s the result of our own personal experiences at Independent Schools, or it could be the natural transition from teaching to the desire to try something different professionally. Regardless of the reason, I would be hard-pressed to find an admission professional who doesn’t frequently declare that the thing they most love about their job is the students that they get to work with. While the students are a clear highlight of the work we do, it’s surprising that we don’t more frequently boast about our networks and mentors in the admission ...

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Perseverance in the Wake of Disaster

By William Diskin

With the images of last week’s devastation in Florida fresh on our minds, it seems nearly impossible to comprehend how the communities that have been literally flattened will ever rise again. Where will all of those displaced families live now? How will the communities even begin to clean up? Can the neighborhoods and schools be rebuilt? How would we handle such a catastrophe if it happened in our community? How can we help? The enormity of these questions is overwhelming. The size and scope of the devastation is difficult to process. And yet – human nature endures. People find ways to move forward. Families manage to get back on their feet. ...

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Admissions Directors as Educators

By Shuja Khan

Will was a gangly eighth grader, a little awkward but totally sincere. The two of us connected in that way that makes admissions work meaningful. He’d hang around after open houses to tell me about his part in the school play. He kept me updated on the minutiae of his life, which I appreciated because he was so earnest about it. The first call I got after decisions went out, and I mean literally the instant they went out, was from him. Fast forward to winter break. Will’s family bought presents for everyone at the school. Not just his teachers, but all the teachers. The front desk crew. The lunch staff. He didn’t play a sport, but our athletic director got ...

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The Year-Long Admission Cycle in Neurodivergent Independent Schools

By Portia York

Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, ADHD, Executive Function Disorder, ASD, and many other learning deficit diagnoses, accompanied by acronyms, float around a neurodivergent school, especially this time of year in the admissions office. The admissions cycle is strikingly different in neurodivergent independent schools than it is in traditional independent schools. Neurodivergent schools like to say that we start our re-enrollment process around the same time frame as traditional private schools allowing a similar window and process for families to return contracts. However, we branch pretty far away from traditional private schools with prospective families and new enrollment. ...

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Building a Podcast: A Blueprint for Easily Broadcasting Engaging Audio Content

By Natasha Estey

In March 2020, COVID-19 had arrived, and society was asked to effectively shut down. What that meant for The York School was the entire admissions process went virtual and every single touchpoint with families had to be re-imagined: creating a 3D school tour, hosting virtual open houses, conducting online assessments, and interviewing parents and prospective students via Zoom. But we weren’t convinced these were enough to provide prospective families with a true sense for what sets The York School apart. So we opted to embrace the popularity of the podcast medium to develop YORK Talks, a series modelled after our successful YORK Talks presentations typically ...

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The Dilemma of Testing

By Shuja Khan

The University of California at Berkeley adopted the SAT as a standard for admission in 1967, a good 20 years after the ETS was founded. It was a big feather in ETS’s cap. That delay was partly because the school was on the West Coast and the ETS was an East Coast institution. But the other reason was Berkeley had its own method for finding students (Lemann). Prior to the SAT, Berkeley admitted all qualified high school graduates from the state of California. It was then the job of professors to sift through the freshman class. While not an explicitly stated policy, professors of freshmen generally failed about half their students, straining the grade down to ...

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