When working in a different independent school’s admission office many years ago, I sat on an admission committee that included myself, the head of school, the head of the middle school division, and a faculty member. We were a committee that functioned like many: we read each application on our own, took written notes, and then met as a group to make the final admission decisions. (For more on the variety of ways admissions committees work, see “Come on...Do Admission Committees Really Exist?”) We were a tight-knit group of two men and two women, all white, all from similar backgrounds, and we truly enjoyed each other’s company. Each of us knew our school well and the types of students who were successful there. We were, admittedly, not a diverse group. However, we were strongly committed to enrolling a diverse group of students and worked hard to make sure that everyone agreed on each decision we made over many hours and sometimes challenging conversations. As the youngest, I learned much from my colleagues around the tiny folding table we moved into my office each winter, and I like to believe that they learned something from me in return through those long days and nights.

One day we were chatting over coffee during a break about the order in which we read the pieces of paper in the file (yes, Virginia, we once had physical file folders with papers in them! Crazy!). We did not prescribe a specific order to review the applicant folder, and it was interesting to hear each person’s approach. Perhaps because I learned how to read applications as a college admission officer, I automatically read the demographic information first — the student’s name, age, gender, address/town, school, parent occupations and educational background, and the like. In my mind, everything I was about to read was informed by these factors and provided context for whatever I learned about the student from the rest of the file. The faculty member shared that she always read the recommendations first. She felt the most reliable source of information was from her teaching colleagues at the student’s current school, and if there were concerns about classroom behavior, for example, that information would influence the rest of her review of the file. One person shared what at first glance seemed like a compliment to me, as I was responsible for interviewing all of the candidates and their parents: “The first thing I turn to is Amy’s interview report. I trust her. If she doesn’t like the kid, that’s good enough for me.”

Yikes! I appreciated his trust in my judgment … but talk about pressure! As I’ve written previously, the interview is just one piece of a lot of information about students in a holistic admission process, and even back then, should not have been the primary factor for making an admission decision. Fortunately, we’ve come a long way in the way we approach evaluating candidates. Thanks to important research on both implicit and explicit bias, admission officers have more tools and greater understanding than ever before about how their impressions, background, and, yes, bias, can impact the work that we do. The Implicit Association test and Kira Talent’s Nine Forms of Bias in Admission are just two of the resources we have used at Loomis Chaffee to learn about the ways in which our interactions with and evaluations of candidates are impacted by things we don’t always see. This can range from common forms of stereotype bias such as assumptions made based on racial, cultural, or gender-based stereotypes to something less overt but similarly problematic such as ingroup, or similar-association bias, where shared experience or identity of an interviewer and a student might lead to a positive evaluation. Another form of this is when the student “reminds” an evaluator of another student at the school and their profile ends up being conflated with the other person. “This applicant reminds me so much of Sara F. [Student Council President]!!” I’ve stopped myself from writing this or a similar comment in an interview report more than once. “Amy, this person is not [name of current or past Pelican], they are a person in their own right! Do not write that,” I tell myself, even though I’m itching to make the easily understood reference with my colleagues rather than having to do the harder work of assessing the student’s fit for Loomis as individuals.

There are many other types of bias we must learn to recognize in ourselves and others and continue to work to eliminate in our assessments when we see it. This is one of the most difficult things we do as admission officers, but it is the most crucial aspect of what we do. We must have both a commitment to fair and comprehensive consideration of our candidates as well as a commitment to basing our evaluation on factual evidence, rather than unconscious assumptions and personal connections. I may enjoy swapping favorite Broadway musicals with a fellow thespian I’m interviewing, but I know that I must be particularly careful not to let that ingroup bias affect my evaluation of their fit for Loomis in my post-interview report. This is something that has taken a conscious effort to learn, given that it’s only in recent years that the advantage or disadvantage certain candidates receive because of the inherent bias of admission professionals (we are human, after all!) has been brought into the light and openly discussed within the industry. And I am still learning, thanks to the willingness of my colleagues to let me know when something has crept in. (Positive bias towards Eagle Scouts? Yes. Checked.)

Genuine admission: every year there are students whom I have enjoyed interviewing but who are not admitted to Loomis Chaffee, and it makes me slightly relieved. It sounds terrible to say, but what it means is that the system is working and that as the dean, my team is not relying solely on my judgment in a thirty-minute conversation with a student to determine whether Loomis is the right fit for them (and vice versa). We are a broader, more diverse, and more interesting school than that outcome would imply, and we need far more information on our students than one interaction with one person. While it’s our goal to have great conversations with students (see “Why I Avoid Interview Advice” for more on that score), it’s actually not the primary goal of the interview. The primary goal is to ensure that whatever bias we bring to that conversation as a person is not unfairly influencing the evaluation of the candidate, and we work hard at Loomis to name, own, and check our bias — even if you love the musical Six as much as I do.