Distinctive

By Caroline Matas, Ph.D.

It doesn’t take a deep dive into college admissions Reddit, TikTok, or discussion boards to encounter tall tales about the mythical creature at the center of it all: the Admissions Counselor.  

The Admissions Counselor is larger than life, all-knowing, the keeper of the keys to your future.

The Admissions Counselor throws all their application files down the stairs and only reviews the ones that land face-up.

The Admissions Counselor is bingeing The Summer I Turned Pretty while AI reviews all their applications for them.

The Admissions Counselor saw that typo you made and IMMEDIATELY tossed your file into a bonfire; better luck next year.

As a former admissions counselor, I’ve seen and heard all kinds of speculation about what happens once applicants hit “submit.” It’s only natural: the college admissions office–something high schoolers likely never thought about prior to, say, junior year–plays a sudden and outsized role in determining their futures. Plus, counselors make these all-important decisions behind closed doors; they don’t have to provide outsiders with an explanation about “who gets in and why”. (Check out Jeffrey Selingo’s book by the same name, which provides a fascinating peek behind the curtain at how different admissions offices build their classes). 

Who are these mysterious creatures, and what do they want? It’s a topic of constant debate among applicants and their parents, and, unfortunately, this means the internet is full of contradictory answers (some good, some bad, some ludicrous).

I certainly don’t have all the answers, either. But here’s one thing I can assure you: there is no one, mythical Admissions Counselor. They are people–all different kinds of people, the same as everyone else! Anyone who tells you they know exactly what an Admissions Counselor is looking for is leaning more on myth than fact.

Here are some guidelines you can keep in mind as you begin preparing your applications (or anxiously await decisions on the ones you’ve submitted). Hopefully, these will help you stick to what you can know and let go of what you (and everyone else!) can’t.

So, what can you expect from your admissions counselors?

• Your admissions counselors WILL read your entire application file. 

This is largely good news. Anything you put effort into including in your file will be reviewed by any admissions offices you send it to. No one is haphazardly throwing applications into reject and accept piles. No one is using AI to supplant a good old-fashioned read-through (although they might use AI to help them speed up busy work–like recalculating your GPA according to their in-house standards–to give themselves even more time to actually sit with your essays).

The takeaway? For better or worse, admissions counselors are really seeing the work you put into your application. If you submit a polished, thoughtful application, they will see it. If you cut corners, they will probably see that, too.

• Your admissions counselors have seen every trick in the book.

Speaking of cutting corners–if you are looking for ways to pull one over on your admissions counselors, you can trust that they will sniff it out. Every year, a few students think they’ve cracked the code on admissions: signing up for a rigorous courseload, then dropping those courses after they’ve sent in applications; working hard in the fall but letting their grades slip in the spring; applying early decision with plans to back out if they get in somewhere better. Admissions counselors and your school administrators do talk, and they specifically follow up on things like your senior year transcript and progress (for a chilling example of this, see Tulane’s 2025 ban on early decision applicants from a Colorado high school after a student backed out of their ED agreement). 

The takeaway? If you think you’ve found the “one neat trick” to getting into college, it will almost definitely backfire.

• Because your counselor is reading every single file, they are relying on YOU to quickly and effectively tell them who you are.

A ballerina who wants to be an astrophysicist? A soccer player who obsessively maintains an ant farm? A coder who spends their weekends geocaching? Identify the different nodes of what make you who you are (and—the more novel the combination, the activities, or the anecdotes, the better!). Then, use your essays, awards, and activities sections to paint a clear picture of how those nodes come together to make you.

The takeaway? Your admissions counselor is tired and has read approximately one billion files. The easier you make it for them to see what you would add to their campus community—the activities you do, the life experiences you bring, the academic path you’ll forge—the better. 

Just as important–if not more so–are the things you can’t expect from your admissions counselors.

• You can’t assume your admissions counselors know everything you know.

Even though most admissions counselors become quite familiar with the schools in their assigned regions, it’s crucial to remember that they don’t go to your school. Make sure you describe your role in your club, your position on your sports team, or your work in the lab so that someone with zero background knowledge can still understand what you’ve done. This will help your admissions counselors get a clearer picture of you and your accomplishments!

The takeaway: Erase all the acronyms in your activities descriptions and essays! Be sure to include context about how selective or rare your awards, tournament wins, or other accomplishments are! If you don’t tell them, they won’t know! If something big happens that isn’t in your application file (a new award, an upturn in your grades, etc.), find out if there’s a way to update your admissions counselors. Some applicant portals offer a space to share this information, others require you to email your regional admissions counselor, and others don’t accept this sort of update at all. 

• You can’t expect that you know exactly what your admissions counselors are looking for.

This is my final (and perhaps biggest) piece of advice. As you might have discovered in high school (and will certainly discover in college): not everything is for everybody. For every professor that loves your writing style, you might find one that only has critiques for you. The same is true in admissions offices: one admissions counselor might be moved to tears about your heartwarming story about your grandmother, while another rolls their eyes and finds it trite or overdone. This is a hard truth: you simply don’t know who will come across your file–the life experiences and preferences that lead them to resonate with one student’s story while their eyes glaze over at another’s. 

There is, however, some good news: some colleges actually tell you what they want to see out of a given essay. The Tufts Inside Admissions Blog and the Inside the Yale Admissions Office podcast are just two examples of schools that spell out what they’d like you to highlight in different parts of your application.

Nevertheless, the takeaway remains (and it is, I think, good news): Even if you craft your essay to exactly hit the notes schools ask for, your style, personal anecdotes, and tone are up to you. Since there’s no way to read the minds of the people who will read your essays, you get to truly look inside and find your voice, sharing what matters most to you. 

At the end of the day, you can rest in the knowledge that the schools that admit you have seen you for your full self.