Interview
Q:
How are admission decisions made?
A:
Admission decisions are made in committees,
consisting of admission counselors and members of
the Leadership Team. Much like having different perspectives
in a classroom, you need to have different perspectives in
the Admission Committee as well. Admission counselors
meet different kids during the process, and one counselor
might have a group of students that they feel very strongly
about, while another counselor might advocate for another,
for example. Committee members go through a process of
discussing the goals for the particular class in consideration,
and then deciding which applicants most align with those
goals. These conversations are an important part of
developing and understanding who we are as a school and
identifying which students are capable of being successful in
our program. We ask questions like, “Is this student within
our range? If they are outside of it, then what do we do about
that? Is our range too narrow? Does the student just need
more time?” Admission committee conversations are some
of the most meaningful conversations that I have had in any
school that I have worked because the decision to say, “Yes,”
or “No,” about a particular child really reveals the things that
matter to you as a school.
Q:
Are there any differences between the role
of Admission Directors in international
schools and your role as Dean of Admission of
Keystone Academy? Can you explain your specific
responsibilities?
A:
Most of Keystone’s students will be Chinese. So the
makeup of our student body affords us the opportunity
to think about our enrollment over time, and create an
admission process that is deliberate, and intentional about
the groups of students that we are putting together. We have
the luxury to create, tweak and grow the most interesting
and dynamic class possible. This also means that I am very
much connected to the school on the academic side; to what
is happening in our program, to how our kids are growing
over time, to who they are, and who they are becoming.
These specific tasks are perhaps challenging for international
schools to accomplish due to the fact that their student body
is coming and going from all over the world and at different
times of the year. I can imagine that Admission Directors at
these schools are spending a lot of time managing student
turnovers, and transition points for kids and faculty. We will
have much greater stability at Keystone.
44
The Keystone Magazine
Rachael Beare speaking at an
information session for parents
“Our students need to be able to
see how failure can be a step on the
pathway to success.”
Q:
How will you assess and make selection
decisions for younger students, five or six
years old, who perhaps do no yet display any particular
talents or interests?
A:
For younger kids, it is more a matter of observing what
they enjoy doing, how they express themselves, where
their areas of strength are, and how they enjoy spending their
time most. We require similar information from older students,
though it is easier to obtain. I have two very different children.
My daughter spent much of her early years with books; she could
never get enough of them. From the time she could sit up and
turn a page herself, she would turn pages over and over and over
again and look at as many different books that she could get her
hands on. I am not at all surprised that my daughter is now an
avid reader. My son never met a ball that he did not like as a child;
he always wanted to play ball, no matter what kind. He wanted to
throw it in the basket. He wanted to throw it at you. He wanted to
play catch. He wanted to kick it around. That is still very much a
part of his personality – he likes to play. So even at a young age,
kids start to express preferences in very subtle ways. While these
preferences do not express everything about a child (after all, they
have yet to experience all of the things they will come to find they
are talented in), this information is insightful and does provide us
a basis from which to build a class of students.