College Admission Officers Share Their Best Advice for Applicants and Their Parents

As the college counseling process continues for seniors, the St. Stephen’s College Counseling office hosted a virtual expert panel of college admission officers. The experts, who each bring more than 20 years of experience included Jaime Briseno, senior associate director of  Undergraduate Admissions at Georgetown University, Tyra Crosbie, associate dean of Admission & director of Access at Bates College and Ffiona Rees, interim executive director of UCLA Undergraduate Admissions. Each answered pre-submitted parent questions about what their students, from grades 6-12, can do now to present an attractive college application. 

In a well-organized question- and-answer formatted session, parents asked a myriad of questions, including ones about St. Stephen’s unique grading system and how it translates on their campuses, the lack of Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) courses at St. Stephen’s, taking the SAT versus the ACT entrance exam, what’s important for students to include in their essay and ultimately, how can their student’s college application rise to the top of all the rest, and so much more.

“The team here at Georgetown is well-trained into the various ways of grading scales across Texas and across the country and internationally. The last thing that we ever want to do as an admission professional is guess, and so, we look very closely at both the transcript and documents provided by your college counseling office that fully describe the profile of the school, the grading scale and what it means,” said Briseno. “St. Stephen’s is very different and we love that; it’s one of the reasons that we visit yearly.”

“Don’t compare yourself to other schools,” says Crosbie. “But do think about what’s interesting to you. Two: what are you doing to challenge yourself within what’s offered, are you listening to your counselors about what might be interesting and then how are you performing in those courses. So sometimes taking every single hard class doesn’t mean you’re actually challenging yourself if you’re going to struggle in it, so you want to find a balance about the things that you enjoy as well as challenging yourself within your curriculum, again context, context of your school.”

“We are never looking for flaws,” says Briseno. “We’re looking for reasons to admit a student, rather than to deny a student. It’s ok to move in different directions if you’re just not finding joy in that activity. One thing that occurs to me when I’m reading a student’s file and certainly their list of activities is, ‘Would a student have done this activity if they were to never place it on a college application?’ because that tells me, regardless of how it’s being reviewed or assessed on our end, they would still continue to do it.” 

Briseno goes on to say most admissions officers are looking for the activities that are most important to the student and for the applicant to explain why. Admissions officers  are less concerned about a long list of activities but more honed in on the activities in which students find joy.

“It’s ok to have passions and go for it but you don’t need to curate a theme, and I think there’s a difference between those two things in your essay,” says Crosbie.

All three experts strongly encouraged parents to understand that when they are reviewing applications and college essays, they are not always looking for a perfect GPA. Their approach is ‘holistic admissions.’ They are also looking for passionate, good people who are contributing in their own communities and someone who can positively contribute to the environment of their individual college campuses. 

“We have a pretty good idea when it is a genuine passion; it leaps off the page,” says Ress. “It is a glint in the student’s eye when we interview them, if we interview them. It is so clear what is a heartfelt interest and not something that they have either been forced into that is manufactured, that ‘oh I’m going to do this because it’s going to look good on my college application,’ because we genuinely can tell. Our job is to read hundreds of thousands of students a year, we all can see when it’s genuine and that’s what we’re looking for, is what is the genuine spark.”

Collectively, the experts reassured parents that the St. Stephen’s college counselors are doing an excellent job of advising students and some of that proof is in the school’s college matriculation. So far, the class of 2025 has been accepted to schools like Yale, Columbia, Syracuse, Boston University and more. 

In the same breath, experts also reminded parents that it’s also important to know how to respond to the flip side of college admissions. They also talked about the reality of the application process in that there will be occasions that their students may not get into a top school on their list and that’s ok too.

“If you’ve done this right, there will be bumps and bruises and your job [parents] is to help them say, ‘That sucks, that hurts — but you are still a brilliant person and I am so proud of you and keep that perspective and help them keep that perspective and then let’s focus in on the colleges that have said yes, because those are the places who truly want you” says Rees. She continues, “When I’m enrolling 6,000 students, there is no rhyme or reason, they are coming from all different backgrounds, all different walks of life, all different backgrounds all different perspectives and that’s what my job is, but your job [as parents] is to help keep that perspective of who they are and why they’re good,” says Rees.