From tour guide to dean: Jeremiah Quinlan reflects on 20 years at Yale, leading admissions and financial aid with a focus on excellence and opportunity.

Jeremiah Quinlan ’03 grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, and graduated as salutatorian from Hastings High School. Inspired by Yale alumni from his hometown, he visited the campus during his junior year and was drawn to its architecture and atmosphere, even on a rainy February day. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale with a B.A. in history and received his M.B.A. from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, majoring in Marketing, Finance, and Social Enterprise. His deep appreciation for his undergraduate years is a key reason he has spent his career at Yale.

Selected as Dean of Admissions in 2013, and then and then adding the newly created Office of Undergraduate Financial Aid to his portfolio in 2017, Quinlan oversees Yale’s outreach efforts to high-achieving students around the world. His two offices are also responsible for Yale College’s selection, recruitment, and financial aid processes, the development of admissions and financial aid policy and strategy, and the advancement of Yale’s position as a global leader in affordability and undergraduate education.

Title: Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid
Term in current position: Eight years
Years working at Yale: 24 years (if you include his undergraduate years!)

How did you go from Yale student to staff member?

When I was an undergrad, I worked in the Admissions Office, and I was a tour guide. I was a history major and my vision was to teach high-school history, so I was part of Yale’s teacher preparation program, a forerunner of today’s education studies program. In the summer of my senior year, I took a job in Admissions interviewing high-school seniors.

I really enjoyed talking with students and their families about the process of thinking about and applying to college.

I lived in New Haven in an apartment off campus and I got out of the Yale bubble and explored the city for the first time. I was really pleased with the experience. I thought the small city environment with its great restaurants and good energy would be a wonderful place to live after I graduated and less expensive than Boston or New York. So, following Commencement, I was hired as a junior admissions officer with a territory of 18 states, only one of which I had ever been to. I spent the first few years traveling around the country talking to students and parents about Yale. It was great.

Tell me about your current role.

I oversee two offices, undergraduate admissions and undergraduate financial aid. In admissions we’re responsible for outreach to prospective high school students around the country and around the world, and selecting applicants for Yale College. In financial aid, we focus on working with accepted Yale College students and families to make this an affordable education — two incredible offices with stellar teams that do mission-driven work.

It is not always an easy job, especially considering that we are selecting 2,200 students from 50,000 applications. There are institutional priorities that we strive to meet and a lot of scrutiny on our work, not to mention upset applicants and families who are not accepted.

But what I like about the work is that we’re truly at the nexus between secondary and higher education. These days I spend most of my time as the ambassador for the admissions process to faculty, committees, university leadership, and trustees, while my team is out there talking to high school students and parents.

Would you say that selecting a class is like putting together a quilt?

Yes. I think the opportunity to build a class at Yale is still one of the things that I love about this work. We can admit 2,200 students — some are excellent at sports, music, or building robots. We have the ability to construct a class that is so incredibly diverse across dozens, if not hundreds, of dimensions. It’s wonderful to build a community filled with bright ambitious students from big and small high schools, rural and urban areas, different regions of the U.S. and different countries, with different academic interests and extracurricular passions.

What would you say to someone who’s looking for a career in your field?

It’s challenging, energizing, fast-paced work. And we’re at a moment in time where there is a lot of attention being paid to highly selective admissions. But it’s wonderful to read the essays and get to know students — to hear about the hopes and dreams and aspirations and challenges of high school seniors in the country.

One of the things I tell young people who are thinking about a career in admissions is that you get to travel the world in September and October visiting high schools, and then, when you‘re sick of living out of a suitcase, you buckle down and begin reading applications in November. And then, when you’re tired of reading applications, you present your strongest applications to the Admissions Committee in December, and in January, you read again. I like the cyclical nature of the work, which also allows for some learning and development opportunities.

What do you enjoy most about working at Yale?

Well, I’ve always loved school — high school, my undergraduate years here at Yale, and business school at Northwestern. Working for a university with mission-driven people is always interesting. I love the intellectual vitality of the place. My wife and I have settled here with our two children, ages nine and six. I love New Haven, and I also love the whole state. My role gives me a fascinating snapshot of the world of K-12 education. It’s a real pleasure, honor, and privilege to be in this position and read students’ personal statements. It’s very powerful. And it’s still enjoyable 20 years in. I wake up in the morning and look forward to the committees that I get to chair; it’s a great part of the job.

How about your proudest moment?

I think my proudest moment is the progress we’ve made on socioeconomic diversity, doubling the number of Pell-eligible students on campus. Last year we were at 25%. This all took off under President Salovey’s leadership; in fact, he became president and I became dean on July 1, 2013. At our first meeting, he gave me three goals and one of them was to move Yale from the bottom to the top of the Ivy League in terms of socioeconomic diversity, and we’ve accomplished that. One of the reasons that this is so exciting is that we know that a Yale education can make a difference in the lives of students and their families. We know a Yale education can be deeply meaningful, and to be able to open it up to a more talented base of young people has been the number one accomplishment of my first ten years in this position.

How do you see your role connecting to Yale’s mission?

We’re literally the front line. Yale College is larger than any of the other graduate and professional schools. We have 50,000 applications a year, which is probably more than all our other schools combined. As the front door of the university, we are mission critical in so many ways. The students and the faculty are at the core of this place, and we love being a part of it.

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