Lauren Ye ’26

BUSY SEASON Christy Loewen, pictured left, and Eric Gajar, pictured right, read an application for the next year. “A lot of people ask, what does it take to be admitted?” said Gajar. “We are first and foremost a college prep school, so we want people who can handle that, but [who] also are good citizens to have as a part of the community.”

Application fees, extracurricular forms, recommendation letters, transcripts, and video interviews—these are all components of a college application. However, many may not know that they are also seen on the Greenhills middle and upper school applications.

As the school prepares to welcome lower school students, one of the busiest offices in the building is the enrollment office. In the past year, they have created a new application for the lower school, led several outreach events, and begun to evaluate applications for the upcoming academic year, 2026-2027. These have been spearheaded by Co-Director of Enrollment Management and Director of Admissions Christy Loewen, who works with students from junior kindergarten up to sixth grade.

“Right now, we’re giving tours to a lot of families who have never seen the lower school,” said Loewen. “Families are applying for next year, similar to [the middle and upper school], so we’re just helping [families] get all of their application things in, and then in the spring we’ll let them know how many spaces we have.” 

The enrollment office has had to approach the application creation process for the lower school slightly differently. An application for a kindergartener may look different from an application for a fifth grader because grades K-6 span so many developmental stages in a child’s life.

“We have had to build an application process for different developmental stages within one building,” said Beth Muszkiewicz, Co-Director of Enrollment Management. “It has been great to see kids that we think will do well here. Of course, we’re not going to see the depth of after-school activities and interests, but we’re still looking for those kids that are excited to learn something new.” 

The lower school application consists of a basic information form, a pre-visit questionnaire and visit day, transcripts from the last full school year and this year, a parent statement, and a feedback form from a previous teacher.

“The way that the lower school is being presented to families is kind of twofold,” said Loewen. “Making sure that kids are able to get the strongest academic foundations in a very developmentally appropriate and play-based way at the younger ages and then also preparing them for middle and upper school here, as well as learning how to be part of a community.”

The middle and upper school applications look fairly similar. The middle school requires a basic information form, a pre-visit questionnaire and visit day, a transcript from the last full school year and this year, a parent statement, a student activity form, a behavioral disclosure form, an academic and a personal recommendation, one set of standardized test scores within the past two years, and a video interview. The upper school requires all of these components, but replaces the academic and personal recommendations with a math and English recommendation.

“We are looking for students who will succeed here, not just academically, but socially and emotionally as a student,” said Muszkiewicz. “We are looking for curious learners, kids who are excited to go to school and that have something interesting to offer. There’s not a cookie-cutter answer we can give, which can be frustrating to parents.”

One addition to the enrollment office in the past three years has been Assistant Director of Outreach and Diversity Initiatives Tiffany Willard-Norris. 

“I need to know what’s going on, how do people perceive us?” said Willard-Norris. “And so getting out in the community, I found very quickly, especially in some of the Black communities, that they just didn’t know about Greenhills. They didn’t even know that we existed.”

Willard-Norris primarily runs the Middle School Prep Program, an outreach program to provide opportunities for fourth and fifth-grade underrepresented students of color to build skills in academics, arts, athletics, and wellness. 

“It was a board initiative specifically targeting African Americans and then Latino or Hispanic communities,” said Willard-Norris. “We don’t have high populations of that, and I think that was something that they really wanted to have more of in our community.”

During the 2023-2024 school year, an Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS) committee visited the school to evaluate the school. This evaluation is a stage in the seven-year accreditation process for the school to remain independent. One primary area the committee found in need of improvement was athletics and retaining high-level athletes, and the school is constantly working to make these changes—improving athletic facilities, separating varsity and junior varsity teams, and hiring high-level coaches.

“Greenhills has always been a place where people could participate, no matter their experience level,” said Associate Director of Enrollment Eric Gajar. “As we’ve gotten more competitive and grown, we don’t want to lose these top-level athletes who want to be in competitive programs and have competitive people around them. I do think that there’s a way to balance both.”

The admissions process at the school is constantly changing, whether it’s adding and removing application components, creating various outreach programs, but their principles have remained the same: finding curious, creative, and responsible citizens.

“I think we have a really holistic admissions process for all the different divisions now, whether lower, middle, or upper school,” said Loewen. “So we’re excited to kind of expand and see how next year goes.”