The VineDown with Emily Smith

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.

From Basketball Coach to NACAC President: Todd Rinehart on Recruiting With Your Soul Intact

Todd Rinehart arrived at the University of Denver in 1997 as an assistant men's basketball coach. When the coaching staff was fired in 2001, he made a pivot that changed everything: he stayed, moved into admissions, and discovered that recruiting athletes had quietly trained him for a career in recruiting students. Twenty-nine years later, he's the Vice Chancellor for Enrollment at DU, where he's helped grow the applicant pool from 5,000 to over 22,000, increased diversity from 13% to 30%+ students of color, and navigated DU through test-optional admissions, the Matriculate partnership for demonstrated financial need, and one of the toughest enrollment environments in a generation. Todd also served as President of NACAC (the National Association for College Admission Counseling), where he chaired the 29-person steering committee that spent 19 months rewriting the profession's code of ethics during a Department of Justice antitrust investigation. He's received three of the profession's top ethics awards for that work. In this episode of The VineDown, Emily and Todd go deep on: - the merit aid arms race and why private tuition is heading past $100K while schools discount 40-60% - the "overnight shift" of students gravitating toward public flagship universities (and why Todd doesn't think the demographic cliff is the real story) - what ethical admissions recruiting actually looks like when institutional survival is on the line - how to build an enrollment team based on character and work ethic (not admissions experience) - and how Denver and DU grew up together, and why location is a strategic asset most schools underuse.If you work in enrollment management, admissions, financial aid, or higher ed leadership, this is episode of The Vinedown is a must-listen.