How To Lead A More Agile Admissions Office

“Agility” is one of those words that gets thrown around often, especially in the fall. It shows up in staff meetings, conference keynotes, and vendor presentations. But when you strip away the jargon, the core idea is simple: an agile admissions office sees what’s changing and adjusts in time to matter.

That’s not a flashy concept. It’s a leadership principle. And it’s becoming one of the clearest differentiators between teams that get ahead and those that fall behind—especially in the critical early weeks of recruitment.

In most admissions offices, the challenge isn’t effort. It’s direction. Counselors are working hard, running travel schedules, making calls, and answering emails. But their priorities are often shaped by static lists, historical patterns, or internal expectations that don’t reflect what’s actually happening with students right now. That’s where agility breaks down.

Being agile doesn’t mean being reactive. It means being responsive. The distinction matters.

Agility starts with knowing what to pay attention to. For admissions teams, that means watching how student behavior is shifting: who’s engaging more this week, who’s gone quiet, which territories are warming up faster than expected, or which outreach campaigns are underperforming. These are not theoretical questions. They show up in small, trackable ways—portal logins, application timing, campus visit follow-ups, open rates, or calendar activity. The key is not just seeing those changes. It’s making decisions from them in a reasonable window of time.

This kind of agility doesn’t require more counselors or bigger budgets. It requires clarity. Most teams already have more data than they can use. The challenge is converting that data into daily guidance. When a counselor logs in each morning, they should have a clear view of who needs attention, based on what students are doing—not just where they sit in the funnel.

The most agile teams have built routines around this. They don’t assume that last week’s list is still valid. They don’t ask counselors to sort spreadsheets. They build their outreach around updated behavioral insight and they check in often to see what’s shifting. Travel plans get adjusted based on real-time activity. Communications are paused or tweaked based on early indicators. Conversations are prioritized based on recent movement, not gut instinct.

And while systems help facilitate that work, agility also depends on leadership.

A director or dean sets the tone. If counselors are rewarded only for sticking to their initial lists or doing things the way they’ve always done them, they won’t adjust. If they’re encouraged to act on new signals and given the tools to do so quickly, they will. Agility is a function of both infrastructure and permission.

It’s easy to think of agility as a luxury—something large or well-resourced institutions can afford. But in practice, the opposite is often true. The smaller the team, the more important it becomes to focus on where time is best spent. The thinner the margins, the more valuable it is to reallocate attention based on evidence instead of assumptions.

Later this month, we’ll be talking with Robert Nowak, Dean of Admissions at Lawrence University, about what agility looks like inside a real admissions office. It won’t be abstract. It will be grounded in how his team uses real-time signals to shape strategy, stay responsive, and keep their daily work aligned with their goals.

This is not about working faster. It’s about working smarter with what you see. Fall recruitment doesn’t reward speed. It rewards timing. And the institutions that do the best job aligning strategy with behavior—especially in the middle of the funnel—will be the ones that convert interest into enrollment more effectively, with less waste and less guesswork.

Join us September 24 to see how Lawrence University is building agility into its enrollment strategy: crowdcast.io/c/vprobert