VanHorn-Week 6- University of Utah Recruitment

Over the past few days of work I have done a little less interaction with actual students and parents but I have worked with and learned a great deal about the behind the scenes part of the recruitment process.

As I have mentioned before I started the same time as another admissions counselor so I have been able to tag along with much of her training and have been trained similar to if I were going to be working full time. Each one of their admissions counselors is assigned a region of school districts in the state of Utah and also another state in the region. Each counselor is responsible for the schools in these areas and determining where they get the most “bang for their buck” and which schools they should spend the most time working. Before each fall semester the counselors spend the summer looking at different statistics such as the number of graduating seniors that year, the number of students that attended Utah from previous graduating classes, and also their average GPAs and ACT/SAT scores. This simply helps the counselors determine what has been successful in the past and where they should work to make improvements. I have also been learning about the software they use to track these numbers and also manage their recruits. I have been amazed by how much these different software packages are capable of doing how many different areas they can track within their incoming class.

I have also been meeting with each person in the office and learning about their specific areas. One of my favorite areas is the counselor who works in recruiting diverse students. One area that really surprised me was the low number of Native Americans and African Americans at the U. Each group makes up about 1-2% of the student body. So, as you would expect this is a population of students they are looking to heavily recruit. The remainder of the week I will continue to co-lead some of the information sessions and tours and eventually by the end of the week begin doing them on my own. I am also going to begin helping with an effort with California alumni who have shown interest in recruiting California high school students to come to the U. There are numerous high school fairs throughout the state that the university simply does not have the resources to send a representative to each. So, the recruitment office is attempting to find alumni to help with these events.