How to Expand the Definition of Student Success with the Admissions Leader @ UT Austin

The Enrollment VP Who Made "No" Her Best Strategy with Rachel Beech @ Miami University

Most enrollment leaders own the front door. Rachel Beech owns the whole house (admissions, financial aid, the registrar, the career center, student success) "from first postcard to first job offer." From that rare full-funnel seat, she argues something the industry rarely says out loud: the best thing an enrollment team can do is get comfortable saying no. Rachel is the VP of Enrollment Management & Student Success at Miami University, and she's led enrollment across wildly different institutions, from a first-gen Hispanic-Serving Institution to one of the most selective publics in Ohio. In this conversation with Emily Smith, she makes the case that authentic counseling is what keeps a pipeline healthy, and that the families who choose somewhere else still send thank-you notes for exactly that reason. Highlights from the conversation: - Why Rachel coaches some students toward other schools and how that protects Miami's brand - The "yeses firm, noes squishy" rule and how it changes who you hire and trust - The icky family conversation about money and odds that nobody wants to start - How admissions got gamified, and what the 90s did better - What changes when one leader owns admission all the way through job placement - How a "yes culture" (down to the registrar) built one of Ohio's best four-year grad rates - Why AI is quietly cutting enrollment teams out of the process New episodes of The VineDown drop regularly. Subscribe on YouTube and follow on Spotify and Apple Podcasts so you never miss one.

How to Expand the Definition of Student Success with the Admissions Leader @ UT Austin

Everyone in higher ed agrees the ground is shifting. The disagreement is about what to do while it's moving. Dr. Ramon Blakley, who leads admissions at one of the most-watched public institutions in the country, has a deceptively simple answer: stay in your lane, keep moving, and check on your people before they break. As Assistant Vice Provost for Admissions at UT Austin, Blakley sits behind what he calls a loud institutional megaphone: decisions made in his office ripple across Texas and nationwide. In this conversation with host Emily Smith, he trades the inspiration-poster version of leadership for the specific practices that keep a public admissions office functional when everything around it isn't. He says the quiet part out loud about the May 1st "finish line," makes the case for why college isn't the right path for every student, and explains the difference between being data-driven and data-informed. It's a credible, grounded look at leading under pressure… useful whether you run a team, advise students, or are a family trying to understand how admissions decisions actually get made. In this episode: - Why "mission drift is real" and the one rule Blakley uses to avoid it - The May 1st truth most colleges won't admit to families - How he spots burnout on his team long before someone says "I'm done" - The hidden, exhausting job every manager does and never names - Why he insists leaders are built, not born and where they're actually made - Data-driven vs. data-informed, and why the difference matters for students - His case that college isn't the only valid pathway from someone who sells four years of it If conversations like this help you make sense of college and leadership, follow The VineDown so you don't miss the next one. Watch on YouTube or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

How Brutal Honesty Built Five Straight Years of Enrollment Records | Jenny Sawyer @ Louisville

Jenny Sawyer has been telling families no for over a decade. She'll open ChatGPT mid-call, run the math in real time, and tell a student their second-choice school is a better financial decision than the one she runs admissions for. Then she'll wish them well. She's the Associate Provost and Executive Director of Admissions at the University of Louisville, a public university in a poor state that has just posted five consecutive years of enrollment records, including a class of 3,373 students that broke the all-time record the year it was set. Jenny built that record by starting her career in student affairs, not recruitment, and never fully leaving. In her view, retention work starts the moment you pick up the phone. In this episode: - How Jenny's background in student affairs rewired the way she thinks about recruitment and why she tells her staff to think of themselves as enrollment counselors, not admissions counselors - The live call where she opened ChatGPT, ran the numbers, and talked a student out of taking $25,000 in freshman-year loans at her own school - Why she thinks media coverage of student debt is actively scaring away the students who would actually benefit from smart borrowing - What the "missing middle" looks like (families who don't qualify for Pell but still can't cover the gap) and what UofL is doing about it - How UofL grew transfer enrollment 22% by getting ahead of the credit evaluation problem with AI - Her honest read on what the demographic cliff means for schools that won't adapt and why she thinks it's the most exciting time in higher ed to be paying attentionSubscribe to The VineDown on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Follow Emily Smith on LinkedIn for more conversations at the intersection of higher ed and what's actually working.

How UCLA's Head of Admissions Processes 170,000 Applications a Year | Gary Clark

Gary Clark has 175,000 applications landing on his desk every year as Associate Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management at UCLA. He's also one of the loudest voices in higher ed arguing that selectivity is not a proxy for quality. In this episode of The VineDown, Emily sits down with Gary to pull apart the pressure cooker that college admissions has become, why the system is producing "college farmers" instead of curious humans, and what he'd actually tell his own kid about where to go to school. What you'll take away: - Why the head of UCLA admissions thinks prestige is overrated, and why he's one of the few people with the standing to say it out loud - What a "college farmer" is, why admissions offices can spot them immediately, and what Gary would tell students and parents who are building a resume instead of a life - How UCLA actually reads 175,000 applications - The strongest case for community college you'll hear from anyone inside a flagship university, including why 93% of UCLA's transfer students came through that path - What Gary tells incoming students about surviving their first year at a place the size of UCLA and why feeling lost doesn't mean you don't belong - The hard truth Gary is sitting with about the next generation of enrollment leaders, and what he hopes they hear from people like him - Where AI fits (and doesn't fit) in the future of admissions and the parts of the process Gary says will stay human Subscribe to The VineDown for weekly conversations at the intersection of higher education, enrollment strategy, and the humans navigating both. New episodes every week.

The Transcript Is Broken: Kevin Mathes on Why Admissions Is Running on Outdated Infrastructure

Kevin Mathes is the Vice President of Enrollment Management and Dean of Admissions at Bucknell University. It’s a full circle moment as Bucknell is his alma mater, where he started as a first-year tour guide before spending nearly two decades working his way back to lead the whole operation. Under his leadership, Bucknell has achieved five consecutive years of record enrollment, including the largest incoming class in university history (1,040 students). He had the dream and made it come true. But what Kevin is fired up about right now is the plumbing underneath the admissions process that nobody talks about. In this episode, Emily and Kevin dig into the most overlooked infrastructure problem in college admissions: the high school transcript. No two transcripts look alike. No two schools format courses the same way. No two readers process one identically. And AI, while promising, has yet to fully solve the standardization and mapping challenge at the heart of it all. Kevin shares his vision for a centralized repository of high school data. They also get into: → The real cost of human inconsistency in transcript review and why two readers can come to completely different conclusions on the same document → Kevin's hands-on experience testing AI transcript processing tools, and his candid take on where the technology is genuinely useful → Why financial aid and admissions need to be treated as one integrated process, not two separate conversations → Bucknell's test-optional policy, now extended through 2027, and the unexpected data showing non-submitters engaging at higher rates in academic and residential life → What it really felt like to return as Dean to a place where half the staff knew you as a student worker And Emily tells the most chaotic story of her college career, which involves a perfect AP score, a dark lecture hall, a runaway slide projector, and a professor who eventually apologized. New episodes of The VineDown drop every other week. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.