Are your consultants current or prior admission committee members?

July 21, 2023 :: jessica

We don’t consider prior admissions office experience when hiring our consultants. Unlike other consulting firms that often hire former admissions officers based solely on their past roles, we have a different approach. We subject all our applicants, including those with admissions backgrounds, to a rigorous screening and training process. Only a small percentage, around 5-6%, of applicants make it through and join our team. While we are open to hiring former deans of admission, our main criterion is their effectiveness as mentors, which is crucial for our work. Although having a former dean of admissions may have marketing appeal and may sound or feel reassuring to parents, we prioritize effectiveness in admissions consulting. Based on our experience, working with deans of admissions has not always yielded the best outcomes. Many deans were limited by their specific ways of thinking, which didn’t always lead to optimal decisions for every applicant. Their feedback often lacked depth, providing surface-level evaluations without explanations or guidance for improvement. As a result, we shifted our focus to the most talented consultants who consistently achieve excellent results, rather than actively recruiting former deans. This choice may result in losing some prospective clients, but we prioritize maintaining the quality of our work.