The Admissions Directors Lunchcast

A special episode with Atmosphere TV. You know those screens in every bar, restaurant, salon, and dentist's waiting room? Chris Aragon explains what "audio-optional video" means, why nobody actually reads the closed captions on SportsCenter, and how colleges are using a 65,000-venue network to reach families where they already are, with no minimum spend or flight length. Guest: Chris...

Season finale. What actually works that nobody wants to say out loud? This week: the case for fewer AP courses and more trades, why most enrollment problems are really follow-up problems, and an argument about whether we'd have time to actually know our students if we hadn't chosen to build applicant pools this big. Influencer guest: Matt Fischer, 6-12 instructor at Fort Campbell High Scho...

The aid package is confusing. This week: why families misread aid letters before the letters even arrive, what "standard assets" actually means, and one guest's case that we should stop calling it retention and start calling it continuous enrollment. Influencer guest: Evelyn Jerome Alexander, Certified Educational Planner and owner of Magellan College Counseling in Los Angeles — she&...

Why does a student start an application but never finish it? Why can a generous financial aid offer feel disappointing to a family? On this episode of the Admissions Directors Lunchcast , Teege Mettille and Nathan Ament talk with Laura Rudolph of Square One Consulting about applying behavioral economics to college enrollment. Laura explores the intention–action gap, the small points of friction th...

Your tour guide is the whole visit, and you barely control what they say. This week: what students actually remember from a campus visit, why the climbing wall keeps making the tour route, and how to train ambassadors without ironing the personality out of them. Influencer guest: Ashley Tucker, school counselor at Leyden High Schools District 212 in Franklin Park, Illinois — she hears what student...

Which parts of the campus visit actually move a student, and which parts are just choreography? This week: why the library might be the wrong first stop, whether a self-guided tour beats no tour at all, and what happens to yield when you stop treating the individual visit as the gold standard. Influencer guest: Stuart Nachbar, Certified Educational Planner at Educated Quest in central New Jersey —...

A special episode with The College Board. Social intelligence analyzes that conversation—from students and parents to alumni, faculty, and media—to provide campuses with a deeper understanding of students’ needs and interests to improve outreach at scale. College Board’s new strategic advisory services are built on Campus Sonar’s social intelligence methodology and paired with expert strategists w...

A special episode with Ambio. Streaming ads for higher ed, and the part enrollment leaders have been waiting on: attribution you can actually take to a board. Kelsey Anderson explains how household-level tracking works, where performance TV fits alongside the vendors you already have, and why getting in front of the whole family matters more than getting in front of the student. Guest: Kelsey Ande...

A special episode with CampusESP. Figuring out when, how, and about what to engage parents has been a vexing challenge for many of us. From limitations (not having parent contact information) to the awkard dance of not wanting to step in front of the student, colleges have often defaulted toward stepping back. Today's guest tells us: step forward! Guest: Dave Becker, Co-Founder and CEO Learn m...

Every email you send lands at somebody's kitchen table. This week: what parents are actually worried about underneath the questions they ask, how much of the conversation is really about money, and why more communication often makes families feel less steady rather than more. Influencer guest: Lauren Watson, founder of Watson College Consulting in the Boston area ... the one in the room with t...

A special episode with Custom Viewbook. Most of us are still guessing at the top of the funnel. Sarah Ailes walks us through what a student actually experiences in the four minutes after they click, what lands in the admissions office, and why an inquiry form with an immediate payoff behaves differently than one without. Plus a real case study from Greenville Technical College — 46,000 leads, 65%...

Students don't want to talk on the phone. Or do they? This week: what actually lands in a call or a text, when outreach tips from helpful into intrusive, and why a growing number of students assume your text was sent by a robot. Influencer guest: Megan Ryan Finegan, Senior Associate Director of College Counseling at The Pingry School in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. That's 28 years on both si...

More on the secret roundtables — this time, what's actually going to be discussed. Megan Cooley on email marketing: what happens when nobody has time to think strategically about what they're sending, and where the gaps in the nurture sequence tend to sit. Teege on staff morale and enrollment success: how the draining parts of this work don't just hurt your counselors, they hurt your n...

Everyone's posting. What's actually landing? This week we're asking what moves a student versus what's just noise we're all making at each other ... the polish-versus-authenticity question, who should be holding the account, and whether anyone under 18 cares when a building was built. Influencer guest: Horzy Genao, college counselor at The Franklin School in Jersey City, New Je...

Season 12 starts where the fall always starts: on the road. This season we're asking one question: what actually works? Not what's trendy, not what we've always done. First up: recruitment travel. What makes a high school visit worth the drive? When is a college fair actually doing something for students? And how do you decide a territory isn't worth it anymore? Influencer guest: B...

A short one, and a quiet one. Teege and Megan Cooley are running a series of secret roundtables on Thursday, October 8, a block from the NACAC convention center. No slides. No presentations. No laptops. Just five to fifteen people around a table talking about the work. Four discussions: Jeremy Tiers on culture and leadership, Mary from Three Enrollment on standing out in a crowded market, Teege on...

And here goes another season! Starting next week, season 12 of the Lunchcast will drop in your feed every Tuesday. Eight episodes, all with one theme: what *actually* works? Each week, we'll bring you a discussion with one influencer and one practitioner, all with a goal of giving you something tangible you can use in your office immediately

In this special cross-listed episode, Teege and Nathan discuss whether Teege's new book, College Is Broken, is inherently pessimistic or optimistic. If you are reader, pick up the book on amazon and decide for yourself. If you are listener, subscribe to the College Is Broken: Podcast Edition feed, and let Teege read it to you! Pick up College Is Broken here: Check out the College Is Broken: Po...

For years, we have been talking about all the reasons to leave the profession - and many have. This week, we flip the script, and ask some of our rising stars (and ourselves) to reflect on what keeps them in the profession. As always, we've got two outstanding guests. Joining us as our Practitioner Guest is Debbie Lysicatos , Admissions Counselor at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mis...

The word "advocacy" can mean many different things to many different people. In the world of admissions, we often have a challenge of determining who to advocate for in a given situation. We are all mission-driven folks, who like to think of ourselves as advocating for students, but what do those moments and decisions look like on the ground, day to day? To help sort through that, we hav...

Ahh, yes - the old debate about how leadership and a title can be disconnected. We couldn't think of a better group of people to talk to about this than some rising stars in the profession. We sought out people who are recognized leaders in their NACAC affiliates or on their campus to talk through the challenges, opportunities, and pathways to leadership - without the title. Joining us as our...

Will admissions ever be able to stop talking about burnout? We are used to discussing this topic from the perspective of those of us who have been around a long time, thinking about how things used to be. For this week's episode, we take a twist - zeroing in on burnout prevention from the perspective of rising stars in the college admissions profession. Joining us as our first Practitioner Gue...

Salary, benefits, mission, and how that all changes as we get settled into our role. As you know, this is a topic your hosts can talk about at length with the drop of a hat - so we are thrilled to be joined by two folks who had insights and perspectives that made both Nathan and Teege stop and think. Or, as some people would say, stop, reflect, and relearn. Cathryn Loy, Assistant Director of Admis...

In the heat of the pandemic, we were all working from home. There was no "hybrid" element to worry about - just a whole new way of working. Since then, every aspect of our job can be measured against the question, "Do I need to be in the office to do this?" But with the flexibility comes challenges that didn't exist before. Given our longer runs in the profession, we though...

Well, if there ever were a topic for your hosts to step aside, this is it. In admissions, we are used to a thousand thought pieces about "this generation" being different than "that one" or "the one before that" or even "the first half of this generation." Often, it's unique, valuable insights. Often, it's universal truths masquerading as generationa...