Hey guys, I'm Viet, a sophomore at Stanford University, California.

Prior to my undergraduate here, I attended school in Vietnam until grade 9 and then went to high school in Singapore. I worked at the Stanford Admission Office for a while, and the officers there share some useful tips. Hope this helps. Let me know if I can help in any way. Best, Viet What are they looking for? 1. Academic excellence: your performance in school based on transcripts. Be smart here, you dont have to send all the reports! Of course you must send your prelim, your promotional, and your midyear examination results. As for the midterms, just choose the betters to send. 2. SATs: Remember to work hard. My advice is not to take the SAT more than 3 times and dont take the test if you feel that you are not ready. It would be a waste of money and your SAT report will not look good. A big improvement in your scores will impress the officers. 3. Leardership: whether you have held any leadership position, whether you have led a group of students working on any projects, whether you are a team captain in anything 4. Community Service: Try to elaborate your public service activities and be honest about that. What have you done to benefit the community? What you WISH to do later in your life to help others? 5. Personal Statement: This component will help the officers to pick the best candidates. Spend as much time in this part of the application as you can. After you write the essays (long and short), remember to let your friends and teachers see and comment on your work. A spelling mistake will send a bad signal to the readers. 6. Teachers recommendations: Your teachers will be very busy marking your exams papers. Please allow them more time to work on the letters. You should give them the forms at least one week in advance. Take note, you MUST remind them of the letters. Some busy teachers will accidentally forget until the last day, and therefore they wont be able to write strong recommendations. I would strongly advise you to urge your teachers to fill in the forms AND attach an additional letter to talk more about you. To help your teachers in writing a forceful and personal letter, you should give them your resume

and a list of interesting things about you that your teachers MAY refer to if they have time. 7. Potential to growth: your bad results in grade 10 and better results in grade 11 may signal to the readers that you are improving in your studies. However, bad midterms and good final results may imply that you are a lazy student and only work at the end of the year! You should show that you have the potential to grow, no matter how your current situation is. Special achievements: your Olympiads medals, your special talents, your national champions Dont be too humble about your achievements. Be honest. Unless you need to TELL people how good you are, they won't know! 8. Background: tell them if you have an interesting background. General advice: * Make use of Early Action/Early Decision policy. Choose your favorite and your most matching (your interests and your ability) college and apply ED. * Consider financial aid for rich colleges. Rich and prestigious colleges will give aid if you are a strong candidate. * Dont write too short an essay. Make full use of the space to tell as much information about you as possible because the readers will not have the chance to ask you for additional information theres no interview! A too brief essay may mean that you are either rushing for time, or you put little effort in the application. The more time and effort you put in an application, the more impressive it will be. * If possible, try to fill in as many online forms as the colleges allow you to. Online forms will save the college time. You should send ALL your forms together in one big parcel. Dont be bother to buy nice envelops because the admission officers wont see your envelops. They only see the forms! * Be honest and sincere. The admission officers are extremely experienced in detecting dishonesty. * Start early so that you will have time to edit your applications. * Email the colleges if you have any doubts. Having worked at the Stanford's Admission Office, can you tell us something about the way they 'categorize' applicants, say for example, Vietnamese students in Vietnam,

Vietnamese students in Singapore or Vietnamese students in the US? This is because I have heard many different things about this issue but none of them appear valid enough. 1. Having worked at the Stanford's Admission Office, can you tell us something about the way they 'categorize' applicants, say for example, Vnese students in Vietnam, Vnese students in Sing or Sing students in Sing, Vnese students in the US? This is because I have heard many different things about this issue but none of them appear valid enough. To the best of my knowledge, there is NO 'categorizing' process here! Every applicant is treated the same way. The Vnese students in Vietnam may have the advantage of staying in an interesting environment and may have interesting stories to tell. However, their English is usually not as strong compared to students in Singapore or in the U.S. Students in the U.S and in Singapore are generally more active and dynamic, thanks to the wider range of opportunities. Really??? I thought the admissions officers are aware of the fact that there are not as many opportunities in VN as in America and take that into consideration. For example, a Vnese student may have scored lower on the SAT (obviously, English is not his second language) and taken part in fewer ECs (less activities available) than an American student, it doesn't necessarily mean he has less chance of acceptance, does it? Yup, the admission officers will take applicants' backgrounds into consideration. However, there is NO official 'categorizing' process. Your OVERALL profile will reflect your background, your achievements, and your potential to excel. In addition, test scores are NOT as important as many applicants think. According to my experience so far, test scores contribute about 40% toward your overall profile. The other factors are your performance in school (consistency, improvement...), extracurricular activities, public service, leadership, potential to grow and how you present yourself in the applications. I learned from my school's Adcom that applying ED will actually make it HARDER for an international student who is in need of finaid to get accepted. Why do you encourage Vnese students to apply ED? Is it because Stanford has a different ED policy/attitude? or Is there another reason? This is quite important since it is one of the biggest (mis)perception for Vnese students. Following is an excerpt from my conversation with Bates Adcom. Some people said that if international students with financial need apply through Early Decision (ED) program, that means they have committed 'admission suicide'. To what extent do you think that claim is valid, particularly at Bates? That is quite true, at least at Bates right now. Think about it: we have very limited amount of international financial aid and the pool of Regular int'l students is much much larger than the 'ED pool'. Thus, if we are to live up to our promise of admitting the best students from around the world, we can only admit an extremely small number (I personally think this means one or two) of students for ED program. In other words, if we use up our resources for ED students, then we may get into an awkward situation: some Regular students applying to Bates are

probably brighter and 'better' than ED ones, but we are unable to meet their financial needs and thus lose them to other rival colleges. Hence, for ED program, we admit only few well-qualified int'l students to minimize our 'gamble risk'. Applying ED would significantly decrease your chance? This sounds odd since so many think ED helps them slip through the narrow door of college. It is important to notice that while ED is a brilliant idea for American students, int'l kids might have to think twice about this. This is such a GREAT question to discuss. Yes, school with limited funding for international students prefer int'l students to apply RD. The reason is explained above on your conversation with Bates Adcom. However, at richer institutions with need-blind policy, ED is slightly different. ED MAY NOT increase your chance of getting admitted because the application pool is usually stronger. Better students in the U.S tend to apply ED to their favourite schools. However, if you choose to apply to a not-so-outstanding college, the chance hence will be higher. Does that make sense? It's always helpful to apply ED to show your commitment to a college that you like best AND that fits your standards. ED will be extremely helpful this way. Your commitment to a particular college may create good impression in the Adcom, hence increases your chance of getting admitted. Even if you don't get in, you always have RDs!