In this week’s episode you will hear

Introduction : Mark has a discussion about the role of prestige when selecting a college

This week’s interview : Mark interviews Kate Stricklan on the Role of the Seasonal Admission Officer

• What is going on in the admission office now
• What is the role of the operations team that is mission-critical
• We discuss the difference between seasonals and regionals, and Kate gives us a lot of details about seasonals
• Kate talks about the training that is done for the seasonals
• Kate talks about what she looks for when she is hiring a seasonal admission officer
• Kate discusses how file reading calibration occurs as part of the training for seasonals
• Kate discusses the role that a college major plays during the file reading process at CU Boulder

Mark’s recommended resource of the week :

• Colleges that Allow Self-Reporting of SAT and ACT Scores
• Edvisors: Financial Aid, Student Loans, Scholarships and Money Management
• Complete FAFSA 2026‑2027 Walkthrough | From Start to Submit
• 2023-2024 FAFSA Walkthrough Video English
• CSS Profile Walkthrough
• MEFA Institute: A Deep Dive into the CSS Profile

Speakpipe.com/YCBK is our method if you want to ask a question and we will be prioritizing all questions sent in via Speakpipe. Unfortunately, we will NOT answer questions on the podcast anymore that are emailed in. If you want us to answer a question on the podcast, please use speakpipe.com/YCBK. We feel hearing from our listeners in their own voices adds to the community feel of our podcast.

You can also use this for many other purposes: 1) Send us constructive criticism about how we can improve our podcast 2) Share an encouraging word about something you like about an episode or the podcast in general 3) Share a topic or an article you would like us to address 4) Share a speaker you want us to interview 5) Leave positive feedback for one of our interviewees. We will send your verbal feedback directly to them and I can almost assure you, your positive feedback will make their day.

To sign up to receive Your College-Bound Kid PLUS, our new monthly admissions newsletter, delivered directly to your email once a month, just go to yourcollegeboundkid.com, and you will see the sign-up popup. We will include many of the hot topics being discussed on college campuses.

Check out our new blog. We write timely and insightful articles on college admissions: https://yourcollegeboundkid.com/category/blog/