Aspen High School opens college admissions event to all juniors in Roaring Fork Valley

Over 40 college admissions representatives will come to Aspen High School to perform mock admissions panels, and for the first time it will be open to juniors throughout the Roaring Fork Valley.

The case study will be held at Aspen High School from 6-8 p.m. on Thursday, April 11. Students and parents will be separated into rooms with college admissions representatives to evaluate mock college applications and learn some of the framework admissions representatives use when identifying potential college candidates.

“I think the case study really helps us demystify the process,” said Post-Secondary Administrative Coordinator Susanne Morrison. “We can talk to them all along, show them the process, and show them the Common Application, but this really bursts it wide-open for them.”

It is the fifth year Aspen is hosting the case study for its juniors, but the first year in which juniors from the Roaring Fork School District and other charter and private schools in the valley are able to attend. There will be some rooms where every college admissions representative will speak only Spanish.

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The mock admissions process helps parents and students understand what colleges are looking for in an application, and helps dispel myths about what does and does not lead to a “winning” application, said Brennan Dignan, a post-secondary counselor at Aspen High School. And when it comes from someone who works at a college some of the students are trying to get into, it often carries more weight than when a high school counselor says it, he said.

“The admissions reps want to impart that information that we do as professionals, but that maybe doesn’t land in the same way,” he said. “We don’t have that seemingly professional credibility from the college side, but if you get a rep that will say the same thing that Karen (Hawkes, a post-secondary counselor) and I might say to somebody and it doesn’t land, if it comes from the college side it might, and it really reinforces the work that we’re trying to do here.”

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Admissions representatives will be placed throughout the rooms in which parents and students will be evaluating mock college applications, but they will not reveal which colleges they work for during the case study process. Parents will also be separated from their students so each can get a full picture of what colleges are looking for in general, rather than specifically tailored to their students.

After the case studies, the admissions representatives will talk with parents and students about the schools they work for and answer questions.

The process shows students how GPAs, SAT and ACT scores, and extracurricular activities affect a student’s application, Dignan said.

“Their perceptions after this process definitely change,” he said. “What I think this can do is shift this idea from a sort of transactional approach… to the human storytelling side. They understand that activities aren’t a box to check, it’s a narrative about who I am as a human being.”

“Imparting this idea that it’s not an exercise of how many activities can I do, it’s really about connecting my essay to my extracurriculars. It’s kind of like stitching together all these what seemed like separate elements into one narrative, and I think that’s where you see that shift where they say, ‘I can really just be myself in this process,'” he added.

The process has especially helped parents who are helping their students apply to college for the first time, said Karen Hawkes, a post-secondary counselor at Aspen High School. 
Students and parents who wish to attend must register online beforehand. There will be a wide variety of schools sending representatives, including large state schools and small private schools from across the country.