Lucia Herrmann ’17 is no stranger to reading. After majoring in English at Bryn Mawr, she has years of experience analyzing books, poems, and performances. In her first post-college job she’ll have lots to read, but she’s trading literature for college applications. In July, Herrmann started work as as an admission counselor for the Haverford Office of Admission.
Herrmann will dive head first into another application cycle this fall as she travels to her assigned areas of Texas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, southern New Jersey, and her home state of Florida. After she represents the school at info sessions and college fairs, she’ll hunker down for reading season, a roughly seven week period where each application that Haverford receives gets a comprehensive reading, and an exhaustive consensus-based process to build the College’s next class.
“There’s a lot of reading, but there’s also a lot of dissecting. We get a paper form of a person, and we need to make them come to life,” said Herrmann. “I’m getting all of this information from them and I have to decide whether or not they’d be a good fit for our class and how they would contextualize themselves within the community that we’re building.”
As a senior, Herrmann wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted to do for a career. When Vice President and Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Jess Lord announced to the Class of 2017 that they had a position open, she decided to apply because of the job’s performative aspects and her natural ability to get to know people. That, combined with her learned abilities as an English major, makes her feel ready to take on the new work.
“English teaches you how to think,” she said. “A liberal arts education, the value of it, is that you can analyze issues, you can think critically about everything, you can communicate effectively, and I think all of those come into play in this job.”
Though she looks forward to meeting new people across the country during travel season, she’s especially excited to review applications during committee. In the consensus-based process, each application decision is reached by everyone in the room, and everyone is given equal voice.
“It’s really a democratic process,” she said. “Everyone, regardless of their hierarchy, has the same vote, and we all need to come to agreement on every application. So it’s not the most time effective, but I do think it’s the most Haverfordian.”
Herrmann joins two other new counselors in the office, Karina Wiener ’15 and Kane Willis. Out of the eight people who will help build the next class, six of them will now be Haverford alums. In an office that operates under the same values as the College that it represents, it’s no wonder so many are drawn back to the place they fell in love with as prospective students.
“I really think it’s an honor to build a community and see how they could learn from each other,” said Herrmann.
Photo by Patrick Montero.
“Where They’re Headed” is a blog series reporting on the post-collegiate plans of recent Haverford graduates.