You Are Not Understaffed - You Are Under-Prioritized.

Right now, across the country, admissions counselors are working harder than ever—and still feeling behind.

It’s easy to assume the issue is staffing. On the surface, it makes sense: more applications, more tasks, more students to track, and the same (or smaller) team trying to hold it all together. But after analyzing hundreds of hours of admissions work, we’ve found that the problem often isn’t about headcount at all. It’s about prioritization.

The average counselor spends nearly two hours per day sorting through CRM records, building and interpreting reports, and digging through spreadsheets to answer one central question:

“Who should I focus on today?”

And that’s before they’ve made a single phone call or written a single email.

These are skilled professionals, hired for their ability to build relationships and guide students through high-stakes decisions. But too often, their time is consumed by internal work—wrangling data, pulling filters, rebuilding “the list” for the day. It's not just inefficient. It's demoralizing.

This isn't a knock on CRM systems. It's a reflection of how the volume of data has outpaced the time we have to make sense of it.

And in yield season, that time compression becomes even more acute. There’s no room for slow starts or second-guessing. Counselors need to know where to act, when to act, and why it matters.

The challenge isn’t a lack of effort. It’s the cost of uncertainty.

When teams aren’t confident in their daily priorities, they default to one of two things: overworking or over-worrying. Neither is sustainable. And neither delivers the kind of intentional, focused engagement that yield season demands.

So if your team is feeling the pressure right now, don’t start by asking who’s missing from the staff list. Start by asking whether your team has a clear, trusted way to decide how to spend their time.

Because the biggest gains in yield don’t come from doing more.They come from doing the right things—and doing them on time.

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If you want to further understand the time study, I invite you to watch the recorded presentation we presented to New Jersey ACAC soon after the time study was released.

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