INTERVIEW WITH TINA BROOKS, POMONA COLLEGE ASSOCIATE DEAN OF ADMISSIONS (PART 1 OF 2)

We had the privilege of sitting down recently with Tina Brooks, the Associate Dean of Admissions at Pomona College, to talk about current admissions trends and the unique challenges of higher education in the year ahead. Not only does she have admissions experience, Dr. Tina Brooks also has a broad range of experience in teaching as a professor of English and in publishing. After earning her undergraduate degree in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, she went on to pursue a doctorate at UC Berkeley.

ILUMIN: First of all, how did you get into admissions?

Tina Brooks: Thanks for having me today, Elton, and welcome students!

I got into admissions through the academic route. I had become an English professor, and before that, I worked in New York City in publishing and then kind of took a detour into academia. I decided then that I didn't love lecturing to students in front of the room.

So I followed a path into admissions because I do like working at colleges, and I could continue writing, which is probably my first love. I do our communications at Pomona. If you get emails from us, I probably wrote them. I update our website. I run a student writing blog, and I'm also an athletics liaison. Coming out of Wisconsin, you probably are not shocked that I'm a sports fan. And about a third of our staff work with the athletic coaches on pre-reads, and I also oversee our transfer admissions process there.

ILUMIN: What's been the greatest change among your colleagues and on campus during this time?

Tina Brooks: Well, it's hard to identify the greatest change. Every single day there's changes because, obviously, in March, we all went out of the office. And so I started working remotely. Then everyone started working remotely.

Then the college had to send all the students home. They had to figure out grading policies, how to move instruction online. We had to convert everything to online. We had just announced admissions decisions. So we had to figure out how to mail students things when we weren't in the office.

We had to figure out how to host an admitted students’ program when we couldn't hold it on campus, which we'd been planning for a year. So we moved to Zoom. We moved to Calendly; we moved to Skype; and our lives completely changed. We went test optional when they realized students were not able to take tests.

And we have recently made the decision not to bring the students back to campus. We were working toward a plan where we could bring students back to campus in the fall. But because of the health situation here in Southern California, it felt really, overly optimistic to think we could handle that.

ILUMIN: Yeah. And the list goes on, right? And it's probably not the move that you all wanted to make, in light of all the other schools that are doing some kind of hybrid model. Going entirely online probably wasn't the preferable option, is that correct?

Tina Brooks: No, not at all. And really we were assuming it would be some type of hybrid model. So, in light of that, we extended the deadline by which students could defer--that's a change. 

Everyone is experiencing some type of disruption, whether you're going back to campus or you're not going back to campus, and all schools are still trying to figure out how to do this safely. My husband's a professor at Claremont McKenna College. So they're trying to do some sort of hybrid model and coming up with all sorts of ways to keep students safe.

ILUMIN: And, and just to highlight something that you just said, which is that all of the individual Claremont schools are making their own decisions. Is that correct?

Tina Brooks: Yeah. I mean, they try to coordinate, but if you have siblings, you know you don't always agree on everything. So, I think all of the colleges will be primarily online learning. It's just a question of whether some students will be able to be in a residence on the campus.

That's probably true for all students everywhere.

ILUMIN: Can you comment on what’s going on for international students in light of the uncertainty?

Tina Brooks: A lot of students can't get visa appointments anyway, so it was already a very difficult situation. So we were already preparing for the fact that they would not be on campus in the fall. But yeah, I assume we'll try to let them defer to the spring or defer till next year. 

Financially, if students remain enrolled, they're not going to pay room and board in the fall because they're not going to be on campus. So we're already experiencing a big financial hit. So, we're taking it in the chin financially, but we want to not endanger public health or a student's health, or even more so the health of the staff and faculty who are older and are more vulnerable. So we're trying to make the best decisions we can with that in mind.

ILUMIN: Yeah. And I mean, in light of a changing landscape I can imagine that it's a stressful process. But let's move on to the admissions process at Pomona College. Would you mind sharing an overview of how the admissions process works at Pomona?

Tina Brooks: Definitely. And I think this probably applies to a lot of selective liberal arts colleges. Each of the staff have a territory that we cover, and that's remaining in place because we're not going to travel to these territories anymore, but we still manage those territories.

Because we're a college in California, we all have a territory in California. I have Marin County and what's called the “Far North”--north of Sonoma. And then I have Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Westchester and Long Island. So they're not always contiguous territories, but we split the States.

We split the world. Some of the staff have international territories, and we communicate with students in those territories. We answer their questions when they write to us. We typically travel there. We communicate with counselors. So we get to know the high schools. And then when we read the applications from those schools, we have some familiarity with the schools, the counselors, and the type of students we see year after year. So it builds our knowledge.

The way we read applications is sort of interesting. And it's a growing method among colleges, called the Collaborative Based Evaluations--CBE. It was developed at the University of Pennsylvania and kind of spread out from there. So rather than me reading applications from students in Marin County, by myself, I'm going to read them with a partner. We would sit down together often. So the process will not really change this year because we're able to do this on Skype or through FaceTime or some other method. And we each have our laptops open; we'd each be looking at the same applicant.

I'm going to read all the academic pieces, and my partner is going to read all the personal pieces. And we're going to have a conversation as we're reading it, and I'm going to be taking notes cause it's “my” kid. And so we come to a consensus, the vote, which would be to either move the student on to be considered again or not.

Maybe we're going to recommend a waitlist right now, or maybe it's an early application. We're going to say defer, or maybe we're going to say admit, or maybe we're going to say deny. So we make an initial judgment based on everything we're seeing. And then there's a step two, of course. So all the students that I've moved on are still under consideration.

I'm going to read the whole thing again with the eye towards building a case--how would I present the student to my committee? And through that process, I might say, “You know, there's not enough here now that I've seen everyone from all of the Marin schools. This one does not stand out.” So that student is going to be a deny.

Or I'm going to say, “Yes, I'm going to bring this one to committee. I think it's an admit,” or maybe I really want to hear my committee's view on the student. So yeah, it's a multistage process. So then we meet in committee, and we discuss all the applicants of everyone in the committee. We have small committees, usually five people, and we make decisions.

And then, and there's probably another process where we have too many we admitted, and we shaped those down. So you go through many stages. I think it's always important for students to know that even if you received a deny, you might have been someone who went through six stages of people reading your application and being so close. Or maybe you're a waitlist, but you were an admit until that last second, when we had too many admits and we had to pull someone out. So it's not a perfect system, but it's not just me deciding. It's me and someone else. And then the entire committee and sometimes the entire staff. So it goes through many, many iterations.

ILUMIN: Yeah. Let's talk more about how you evaluate applications. We had someone from UC Santa Barbara on a couple of weeks ago. And the UC system has the 13 point criteria. It almost sounds like there must be another type of rubric along with this close reading of the application, but it sounds like it's still very personal. Can you shed any more light on what goes on behind the discussion for admissions?

Tina Brooks: Yeah. So what I just described was the process, but what's the content of that process? And actually I was speaking about one aspect earlier.

We just went test optional this year. We have not been test optional in the past. So we have an academic viability committee that I'm on. That's really talking about How are we going to evaluate applications this year? Every summer we dive into these topics, and we train the staff because normally, you have new people joining the staff. Or maybe you need to take a fresh look at your processes and your evaluations.

So I want to emphasize that test scores were never the primary thing we're looking at in an application. And I don't think any school would say that test scores are the most important factor. Going test-optional is not as big a change as you might think. Test scores are an extra factor that we now are taking off the table, if students do not submit them. Test optional is a little tricky because some students will have scores and some students will not. But, if you looked at Yale's website today, and we really would say the same thing, which is that the academic record, your transcript, is really the first thing we go to and the most important piece of your application.

And I always say that it's not your GPA alone. It's really that deeper dive into the courses you chose to take every year based on what you could take. And then the rigor, the breadth of your study. Have you taken four years of English with some rigorous options? Have you taken four years of math with rigorous options, especially if you're going to pursue STEM? How many years of science, how many years of social science, how many years of foreign language have you taken? Those are the things we're looking at, and it's because we get 10,000 applications and we're admitting 700 or so. We need a way to differentiate.

So the stronger the program, the more breadth you have, the stronger your application is going to be. The more rigorous and full your curriculum is, the more options you’ll have. And we've always had students who have different grading systems. So the fact that maybe you had passed/fail grades in the spring or credit/no credit--that's okay. We're used to having students who might have homeschool backgrounds, who might have no grades at their schools, who have numbers systems, or weird letter systems. So don't worry about that.

ILUMIN: With regards to the first thing you’re looking at--it’s the transcript. And what I heard you saying is that course selection and rigor matter.

Tina Brooks: I don't want to convey that the only way to get into Pomona is by taking all AP classes. Not at all. We don't recommend taking on too much. We don't recommend you take AP calculus if you hate math.

All I'm saying is to demonstrate that you are academically motivated. Show that you are willing to challenge yourself. Show that you do have an interest outside of one area because we're a liberal arts college; the students who are really narrow are probably not the best fit for us.

So, yes, in terms of, of the transcript, that's what I would say. And then testing, if you're in our median range that we've had in the past, then it's great! Then you're admissible, and that's just another nice factor for you. If you don't have it, we're not looking at it. It's fine.

In terms of teacher recommendations, we look at how you are in the classroom. Are you the one who helps your classmates? Are you the one who speaks? Who gets the conversation going? Are you the one who writes the essay the teachers save for last because it's so good? Are you the one who asks interesting question? So it reveals just a little bit more about you as a student, so we can picture you in the classroom. I like to say that the application is like a novel, and you're the main character. And I'm trying to get to know the main character of this novel. So your transcript tells me a little bit; the teacher recs might give me more insights into you as a student. And then, of course, we care about your activities and your essays.

That's where we really start getting those juicy details that make you human. So that's where we also can see what you would be like on campus. Are you going to be involved politically? Are you an artistic type? Are you an athlete? Are you someone who's into community service? 

It's important to know  how you spend your time outside of class. It doesn't have to be organized activities, clubs, and teams. It can be spending time cooking with your mom or every Sunday you make breakfast for the family. Or you love going to the farmer's market or now that we're stuck in our houses, you’ve been writing songs. We care about those things. All we want to know is how you're spending your time outside of your classes.

 And then the essays are super important. As a former English professor, it might not be shocking, but I love student essays that I don't have to grade.

That's why I really didn't want to be a professor anymore. So in the essays, we need you to take a kind of deep dive and do some self-reflection. The kinds of essays that are strong are those that are very specific to you. Only you could have written this essay. They show us how you think; they let us in on your sense of humor.

They don't have to be about emotional topics, but they should be about something that you care about. Because no one's going to care about it if you don't.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where Tina gives our students advice on how you can stand out with a memorable college essay! Feel free to contact us for a free consultation if you would like more specific advice.