Faculty Perspectives

Milton’s Admissions officers go above and beyond in introducing Milton to prospective students and their families.

Before arriving at Milton as a new sophomore, Christopher Lewis ’15 didn’t know much about American boarding schools. Leaving his home and family in Jamaica was a daunting prospect. A deciding factor was Chris Kane, then a counselor in the Upper School Office of Admission and Lewis’s eventual soccer coach.

Now Lewis and Kane—the school’s director of financial aid and the boys’ varsity soccer head coach—are colleagues, both in the admission office and on the soccer pitch.

“Chris was one of the main reasons my family and I chose for me to come here—the support, care, and concern he showed us throughout the process was above and beyond,” Lewis says. “Then, when I arrived at Goodwin House, the friends I made and the other new students from all over the world became huge sources of support and friendship, and the older kids reinforced that feeling of welcoming.”

Milton’s admission officers are the first point of contact for most prospective students and families.

Before arriving at Milton as a new sophomore, Christopher Lewis ’15 didn’t know much about American boarding schools. Leaving his home and family in Jamaica was a daunting prospect. A deciding factor was Chris Kane, then a counselor in the Upper School Office of Admission and Lewis’s eventual soccer coach.

Now Lewis and Kane—the school’s director of financial aid and boys’ varsity soccer head coach—are colleagues, both in the admission office and on the soccer pitch.

Their work combines marketing and recruitment with a detailed review of applications, and during the entire cycle they act as guides and informative resources for the families they’re assigned.

Among the experienced counselors in the admission office are several parents of current and former students and three Milton alumni: Josh Jordan ’11, Molly Gilmore ’12, and Lewis. To describe them as immersed in school culture is a profound understatement. All the Upper School counselors support students through advisories and overseeing student clubs, and several live on campus and coach athletic teams. Jordan has spent his entire professional career at Milton, with roles in the Lower and Upper Schools, as a football and basketball coach, and as a member of the staff; today, he is the head of Wolcott House in addition to his admission role. Gilmore and Lewis began working in the admission office at the same time. Today, they are married and live in Hathaway House, where they are active dorm parents, drawing on their own experiences as boarders. Lewis is an assistant coach on his former soccer team and head coach of the girls’ varsity track team, and he advises the school’s Black culture club, Onyx, and the Caribbean Students’ Association.

This immersion in student life is paramount to the admission staff’s knowledge of every corner of Milton Academy and its members’ ability to field questions from nervous parents and prospective students during in-person or virtual interviews and follow-up conversations: Is it easy to make friends and belong in the community? What do evenings and weekends look like for boarding students? Does the school have programs tailored to a particular interest? What happens when a student struggles in a class?

“We do tons of interviews,” Lewis says. “Each admission officer meets with hundreds of families every year, but that meeting—for the families—may be their only time on campus throughout the process of selecting a school. And so we’re trying to make sure that we are making them feel heard and seen, and answering questions. A lot of the work is providing information. Milton is a big and complex place, and families have a lot of questions. But it’s just as important that we show them that Milton really prioritizes being welcoming and accessible and that we make them feel comfortable.”

Throughout and following the admission process, students and families interact with current students, part of a series of connections designed to build a sense of belonging and excitement about the community, Gilmore says. “During my freshman year in Hathaway, the group of older girls was so friendly, welcoming, cool, interesting, and diverse, and I still appreciate how much of an effort they made in really getting to know us.”

Admission staff members are supported by Orange and Blue Key (OBK) students, Upper School leaders who serve as ambassadors to visiting families and help promote Milton on the office’s Instagram. Under the guidance of the office’s visit coordinator, Nina Panarese, OBK students manage and train a team of student volunteers who give tours throughout the school year and assist during other admission events, such as virtual information sessions and revisit days for accepted students. Because the tour guides are peer-trained and not given an exact script to follow, their interactions with visitors are friendly and real, Gilmore says.

Tour guides receive training on a route and some talking points about the Upper School and the community, but they’re also counted on to give prospective students and families an honest and personal perspective on the school. The OBK heads schedule tours, and they may opt to align visiting students with guides who share their interests or some aspect of their profile. Magic often happens, however, when guides and their visitors are very different from one another, Lewis says.

“You can’t guarantee that you’ll be matched with someone who mirrors your interests, but that’s a big part of the culture here,” he says. “Milton kids are so multidimensional, and even if you’re meeting with someone from a different demographic, or with different interests, they’re so good at making connections and building genuine relationships.”

“Milton students do such a phenomenal job of welcoming people to campus—even if they’re not tour guides,” Gilmore adds. “I constantly hear anecdotes from prospective families about how they arrived on campus and a student connected with them and walked them all the way to our office. We always hear that we have the friendliest kids of any school they visited. That warmth, I think, is a real differentiator.”