The document below is an assignment on reading a high school profile. I was aware of school profiles before, but had never actually looked at one. I'd always assumed they were pretty standardized, at least among public schools, and didn't realize to what extent each school gets to decide what goes on their profile and how the profile is organized and presented.
This variety of profiles must make it very interesting for admissions officers who need to read through them in order to understand the school context for applicants. It also makes it more clear why admissions offices break their staff up by region. It's not just the travel they do for recruiting, but it also helps them get to know the schools in an area and have that institutional memory, since there's no standard "cheat sheet" to look at that makes it simple to compare schools.
At the IECA conference this spring, I went to a breakout session on the new format that many schools are using for their application reading. In this new style, two readers will go over an application simultaneously, breaking the application up for them to split up. In this model, only one of the readers would look at the school profile, and they'd need to convey the important information fast--most teams read an application together in just 10-12 minutes! I found this Wall Street Journal article that summarizes the new model.