Choate students: look back and try to remember what it was like to apply to boarding school. The tedious process of building your résumé, writing essays, and nervously attending the long-awaited interview is all too familiar for any Choate student. But, now that the ongoing pandemic has turned in-person activities into virtual ones, what is life on the other side of admissions like? To find out, I turned the tables on Choate’s admission officers and interviewed them about their experiences.
Most of the officers start off their days early in the morning. During both the morning and evening, each admission officer conducts around three or four 45-minute interviews a day. Associate Director of Admission Ms. Cynthia Stahura said, “Our schedule this year has changed to be all virtual. We looked at our interview slots and changed our schedule to offer more early-morning slots and later-in-the-evening slots because of Covid and wanting to be accessible for families. Offering these extra slots sort of makes it hopefully fit into everyone’s schedule a little bit more.”
However, an admission officer’s job entails more than just conducting interviews. Ms. Stahura said, “In between interview slots we spend a lot of time collaborating in our office. We’ll have meetings, set agendas, and be working on virtual events; that’s what we’ve been doing a lot this fall. We’ve been offering a robust offering of different types of virtual events get to know Choate and our community.” In addition, much of an admission officer’s role involves traveling to different states and doing recruitment work. For this admission cycle, however, all of those events remains online with virtual outreach programs and virtual interviews.
This increased number of virtual interviews often presents challenges for both the officers and the applicants. Across the board, interviewers often felt disconnected from their interviewees. Ms. Frances Irvine, an interviewer in the Admission Office, said, “You don’t have that same sense of being with someone and being able to hear a tone of voice or body language. Everybody is behind a screen, so it’s unusual that way.”
Ms. Stahura echoed the sentiment. She spoke about the difficulties prospective students face when trying to get a true sense of community. “We want to meet families face to face, and it’s a little bit harder to convey what our community feels like virtually,” she said. “Community really comes from physically walking the campus, and meeting people and talking to a tour guide or one of our Gold Key ambassadors, and that’s something that we’re sort of missing.”
Yet, while there have been several drawbacks to the all-virtual admission process, one positive to the virtual interviews is better accessibility for students for whom a trip to Wallingford for an interview would be unfeasible. Although Choate has offered virtual interviews every admission cycle for those faraway applicants, this year expanded the virtual aspect to a much larger scale. Additionally, for many applicants, being able to interview in their own home is a sense of comfort in a nerve-wracking situation. “Archbold or any admission office can be intimidating. I remember being very intimidated when I interviewed at boarding schools,” said Director of Admission Mr. Jeffrey Beaton, who completed a post-graduate year at the Loomis Chaffee School.
Most days, admission officers’ schedules are long and hectic. In those circumstances, what do they do to relieve their stress? Ms. Stahura, who lives in a busy household apart from her role in the admission office, highlighted the importance of balancing home, family, and work. “It helps to go outside. On my 8:00 a.m. mornings, I usually go for a walk before just to get some fresh air and get set for the day,” she said.
As the admission season reaches its busiest point of the year, what motivates these admission officers the most are the students.
“There is nothing better than interviewing an amazing candidate and picturing them on our campus,” Mr. Beaton said. “You are all the next leaders, and it is a true pleasure seeing you all grow in front of our eyes on this campus.”
Graphic by Yuko Tanaka/The Choate News
