Bruce J. Poch, former dean of admissions at Pomona College: "Colleges often don't provide a narrative to students to help them figure out what the place is about. It's become very commodified."

January 2, 2011

By Eric Hoover

Some admissions deans are tight-lipped about what they do, but Bruce J. Poch let words flow. During his 23 years as vice president and dean of admissions at Pomona College, he expressed strong opinions, colorfully, and became one of the nation's most-quoted admissions officials. Reporters flocked to him because he returned calls, explained complex issues, and (it's true) shared memorable quotes.

Over the years, Mr. Poch criticized many players in the admissions realm, including the College Board, test-preparation companies, and publishers of college guides. But with self-deprecating humor, he also pointed the finger at himself—and his profession. In 2006, he told The Chronicle that colleges should spend more time talking about their educational offerings and less time promoting their new dorms and gyms: "Sometimes I feel like I'm doing a time-share sales pitch, and all I need are balloons to complete the effect."

The Chronicle caught up with Mr. Poch, who resigned from Pomona at the end of December. Saying that he's in "reboot mode" and seeking a new challenge, he reflected on his 33 years in admissions.

Q. Children daydream about becoming astronauts and baseball players and such, but not admissions deans. What brought you to admissions?

A. I went to an all-boys high school where maybe 10 percent of my classmates went to college. It was blue collar and, in some ways, a no-collar school. I was watching high-school classmates get burned right and left because counselors were saying, "You can't afford to do this or that," and they didn't even mention scholarships unless you were an athlete. I watched guys a lot brighter than me get shunted off to two-year colleges.

I went to Oberlin, and when I got there, nerd that I was, I was a tour guide and a host for students visiting overnight, and just was hanging around the admissions office. After graduating, I thought I would do admissions for a couple of years, and then I would go to law school. But I decided I kind of liked admissions. It was advocacy, finding the kids for whom college was not the assumed and automatic next step.

Q. There's a joke in admissions that you stay in the profession for two years or for the rest of your life. What happened during your first few years on the job?

A. I really liked the student contact, seeing what happened to them when they got to college. During my second year at Wesleyan, I was permitted to be an academic adviser. It was an opportunity to see the campus through students' eyes. It was not just bringing them through the gates. If I had been at a place where I just brought them through the gates, I never would have stayed in admissions.

Q. In an essay you contributed to College Unranked , edited by Lloyd Thacker, you wrote that admissions offices love the spotlight but not the microscope: "Any process that isn't perfectly driven by numbers ... looks like it operates using smoke and mirrors. ... Sadly, admissions officers haven't been good teachers about this process, because the smoke and mirrors have, so far, worked to our advantage." What did you mean?

A. The really hyper-selective places have done a good job of being very attractive. Because they've got all these big numbers, a lot of apps, and high SAT scores, it's assumed this place is great. It's the old Groucho Marx joke: Everyone wants to belong to the club that won't accept them as a member.

But there's not a lot of explanation of the reading process, where we make our distinctions. There's a great paranoia about saying too much about the process, because kids will try to tailor themselves accordingly. We open our mouths, and then industries build up around us. So we blow smoke because we're not comfortable being too clear.

The irony people don't grasp is that parents get really angry if their kid has a 2400 SAT score and a perfect record but isn't offered admission. But at those highly selective places, it may be things other than those numbers that get the most attention. That's when people will say, "You're discriminating." Well, admissions is a discriminating process, but not discriminatory.

Q. So how might admissions officers better explain the process?

A. By speaking as candidly as possible without saying, "We want this and not this." I've heard junior admissions officers say, "I really like to see X." Well, OK, but maybe I don't. So talking about the process rather than specific tastes can be better way of explaining it—saying upfront that this is the way we're going to actually read, saying that a lot of things matter, and trying to provide reassurance that we actually are reading all this stuff.

And saying that we're not reading in search of perfection. I often told a story about one student's answer to an essay question at Pomona. It asked him to identify a moment in history that had personal significance. He wrote about the day Louis Armstrong set foot on the moon. Well, the kid was admitted anyway, and he now has a Ph.D. in astrophysics.

Q. I've wondered about the admissions office of 2020. How might it operate differently from the admissions office of today?

A. We're already in a major move to electronic interaction. In a weird way, all of this interaction on Facebook and Twitter is informalizing communication between colleges and students. I think there's going to be some good stuff that comes from that that we still haven't quite figured out.

I do think the Common App has become too common. It's very easy for students to file more casual applications than to figure out later what's important to them. Colleges often don't provide a narrative to students to help them figure out what the place is about. It's become very commodified. Down the road, we need to return to asking, "How does this place fit with me?"

Q. There are metrics for evaluating the success of an admissions dean: applications, yield, diversity, grade-point average, test scores of students. How did you evaluate yourself?

A. I definitely had trustee interest, and I usually wrote a 50-page annual report giving every one of the metrics they could possibly want and a narrative about the class. But in some weird way, the ultimate consumers aren't the board members. For me the ultimate consumer is the faculty. And if I get faculty who are teaching freshmen coming [to me] and saying, "What the hell did you do?," I've got a problem. If I see them loving their students, I would know I was doing well.

During my time at Pomona, their satisfaction has been really striking to me. And retention is a really significant measure. A really high retention measure says students got what they expected, and the admissions office didn't BS them.

Q. Over the last nine years, I've found it increasingly difficult to have frank, on-the-record conversations about admissions with at least some members of the profession. Why do you think that is?

A. Even with something as simple as a letter, stuff gets immediately moved to the Web, and it gets decontextualized. A sentence fragment in context in The Chronicle that's meaningful and useful ends up in one of these snarky blogs, and so there's a much higher danger of saying the wrong thing than used to be the case. 

 Q. You've weighed in on many controversial issues in the press. What kind of responsibility does the modern admissions dean have to explain himself, or how his or her office operates, to the public?

A. Well, I know there's a whole lot of smoke blowing your way. But what the hell is the point of an obfuscated answer? I always saw this as tied in with the dean's role. It's a teaching role. Reporters will do a better job if they get context for things that are going on.

This may go back to the old joke that it's better to have your institution's name in print than not at all, but I've always thought it's better to take the good with the bad. If you're going to get slapped around a bit, OK, maybe you deserve it.

It wasn't part of the plan that we were going to get on anybody's radar screen by speaking candidly, but it happened. I think the place got a reputation for integrity and directness.

I'm well aware that my candor may be my undoing. It could make some presidents or boards uncomfortable. But would I want to be affiliated with a place that was paranoid about honesty? No.