The College Admissions Officer’s Guide
Barbara Lauren, Ph. D., J.D., Editor
American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) (Washington, DC) 2008
$130 non-member, $95 member, 638 pages, hardcover
Reviewed by Joe Adegboyega-Edun
Counselor/College Adviser,
Walter Johnson High School (MD)
The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers published this guide to “complement and support professionals in the field and to serve as the most comprehensive guide specifically for admissions officers.” The guide has 10 sections and 44 chapters contributed by 56 authors. It is notable that the book is easy to read considering its numerous contributors.
This guide may be the most recent and most comprehensive book for college admission officers since the 1998 Handbook for the College Admissions Profession by Swann and Henderson. The ten sections of the book cover the following topics:
- Foundational issues in admission
- Recruiting in different settings
- Marketing tools
- Outreach to various populations
- International students
- Admission processing
- Measurements and placement
- Graduate and professional level admission
- Data and institutional research
- Professional development
The guide looks at issues in college admission in depth, for example, outreach and retention of low-income students (p. 187). It recommends proactive early steps to include both prescriptive (telling [low-income students] what they need to do) and developmental (recognizing other academic and personal concerns) (p.196). It describes co-curricular programs that several universities use, like the College Foundation of North Carolina and the summer bridge program to help retain recent high school graduates in college (p. 197).
The guide extends this comprehensive approach to recruitment and retention to African-American, Hispanic, Asian-Pacific American and Indigenous students (pp. 203-255) focusing on challenges these populations face and recommending support strategies.
In a thorough examination of the barriers to the retention of women-in-engineering the guide found that most women who leave engineering do so before taking the first technical course and have higher grade point averages than many who stay. It identifies overt or covert gender bias at home, at school or from society, resulting in self-doubt for this group (p.262). The guide asks admission officers to remedy this problem by
- Assisting female engineering students in making informed choices about their major and connecting them with engineering faculty during and after the admissions process.
- Educating parents to combat gender bias.
- Ensuring that these students are aware of all options for financial support.
- Connecting them with Women-In-Engineering programs. (p.265)
In its consideration of the Advanced Placement program and its influence on academics and admissions decision making, the guide comments, “AP students exempted from introductory college courses, including mathematics and science courses, earned higher course grades than students who took the introductory course on the college campus.” (p.418)
In a similar analysis of the International Baccalaureate Diploma program, the guide explains its use by admission officers to make admission decisions and award credit. (p.446)
The section on graduate and professional school admission is a thorough examination of key issues which include application, admission, financing options and the evaluation of non-U.S. “Bachelor’s Degrees” in graduate school admission (pp. 453-519).
The guide describes the admissions career ladder and professional development for admission counselors which includes training and team mentoring (pp.565-575).
The guide’s main strength, in addition to its comprehensive and clear presentation style, is that after it identifies a problem, it recommends remediation. This makes it a practical handbook for college admission officers.