Admission as a Classroom: Using Student Ambassadors to Further Your Office’s Work and Provide Real Learning Opportunities

Rebecca Brooks, Associate Director of Admissions, Director of Financial Aid, and Amy Graham, Director of Enrollment Management, Pomfret School, CT Admission offices in the fall are nothing but hectic! Beyond being on the road 50% of the time, you’re managing an interview schedule, tour guides, board reports, professional development, and much more. Forget trying to find opportunities for touch points with families already in the funnel or coming up with creative ways to capture more. This is where your students come in! A foray into the academic curriculum by Pomfret’s admission office last fall proved very successful and became a perfect example of the school’s tagline, “Where Real Learning Happens” by offering its student ambassadors an opportunity to pioneer internship programs. Within this course, students took on research projects that focused on marketing and recruitment, using Google Classroom as their “meeting space,” while also assisting in the day-to-day life of the admission office. How and why we transformed our office into a classroom—and how it provided our students the opportunity to delve into work that was both relevant and applicable while also earning academic credit.