All your

admissions
questions
answered
by a
by a Former
Former Stanford
Stanford
Admissions Officer
Admissions Officer

A CRIMSON EDUCATION PUBLICATION

At Crimson, we are lucky to have many
team members who are experts in the top
university admissions process. Many of
them are graduates from the Ivy League,
Oxford and more, and still others are
academics, professors and PhDs.  their dream university.
But one of our most popular and
experienced experts is Stanford former
admissions officer, Martin Walsh. Matin is
well known for his unique insight as to
what it takes to gain admission to the best
universities in the US, and just as
importantly, exactly what goes on behind
closed doors at Stanford’s admissions office
during application assessment time.
So what are the frequent questions Martin
is asked by prospective top university
admits, and what exactly should you
consider when undertaking the Common
Application process?
In this special Q&A, Martin shares his
unique insights, tips and tricks as to what it
takes to get accepted to a world leading US
university. If you’d like to learn more after
reading, simply click on the link at the end
of the Q&A to arrange a free personalised
consultation with one of our expert
academic advisors.
About Martin Walsh
Martin has spent 15 years either evaluating
applications or counselling students to help
them achieve their goal of admission to
Martin graduated from Santa Clara
University with a degree in History.
Additionally, he holds graduate degrees in
education and law from San Francisco
State University and the University of
California - Hastings College of Law.
"Since leaving Stanford I have
shared my knowledge with
students, teachers and
counselors at international
schools in South Korea, Japan,
China and Italy. And, I serve as
an instructor each summer
with the Counselor Training
Center. I enjoy taking some of
the mystery out of the college
admission process; while also
providing tips, guidance and
insight to parents, students
and teachers."
01. What is an admissions
officer and what do they do?

So basically, your Dean of Admissions hires

a number of admissions officers (AO's), and
then each of those admissions officers are
assigned a region or territory. Your job, as
an admissions officer, is to be an expert on
that territory — to understand the schools,
the curricula, the quality of the teaching,
and the quality of the students in that
particular territory.

02. What did you look for in a

student when it came to
admitting them to Stanford?

If you're looking at a private university in

the United States, particularly an Ivy
League or Stanford, they're going to be
evaluating your application holistically.  So
when I was considering who should be
admitted to Stanford, I considered the
whole person.

With holistic evaluation, it's good to think of

the applicants as hurdlers, trying to get
over each hurdle along the way. I think
there are three hurdles that you have to
survive to perhaps be admitted to Stanford:

01. Numbers

02. Personal Qualities

03. Choices
03. What do you mean by
Numbers, Personal Qualities
and Choices?
Good question! Let me break it down
for you:
01. Numbers
The first thing we looked at was obviously
just numbers. Everything started with an
SAT, ACT, school report or transcript
breakdown. With the SAT and ACT results,
you can easily see which group the
student lands in in comparison to others. 
I also would try to match the course
selections with the program of study the
applicant indicated as a potential major
on their application — which is particularly
important when it comes to courses such
as STEM. In this case for example I would
look closely at the student’s math
capabilities, chemistry, physics, things like
that.  impact your odds of being admitted.
For every 100 applications I'm getting
through, maybe 10 don't survive the
numeric piece of the puzzle.
02. Personal Qualities
This is the part that takes up the most
time, as you really want to understand
who the student is (if I spent 25 minutes
per application, 15-20minutes was on this
section!).
In the case of Stanford, we could consider
the applicant’s personal statement
combined with their responses to four
other essays, their teacher
recommendation letters and their
activities (or extracurriculars). 
An admissions officer will do a deep dive
into these elements to look for what
Stanford calls 'intellectual vitality'. This is
usually easier to recognise rather than
define. We’ll look for a student who
showed leadership in high school, who
took ownership of their learning. It always
involved identifying students who went
above and beyond within the context of
impact on the community.
Intellectual vitality is that wow factor
where you're looking at what the teachers
say about the student, what the student
did, combined with what they wrote
about in their essays. This will vary from
university to university and I think that
Silicon Valley and Stanford go hand in
hand in the sense that Stanford was
looking for students that were innovative
and entrepreneurial, because that was
how the school was structured. It's a
slightly open curriculum, students can
move around, explore ideas. Stanford puts
aside a lot of money for funding of
research.
03. Choices
This is about the student's choices and the
university's choices. Every time you apply,
you're making a choice. It's like you're
choosing to put down computer science
as your major or you're choosing to put
down history as your major, and so the
choice of program of study can absolutely
 
There's certainly some programs that are
more competitive to get into than others,
and most universities are not single-door
admissions but rather they're going to
read an application based on the
student’s choice of program of study. 
The other choice is timing of the
application. Stanford was a restrictive
early action school, but there are other
schools that run early decision programs,
and if you're doing your research, you're
getting a pretty big bump at those
universities statistically (meaning your
chances of admission in early rounds are
usually higher than those in the regular
round).
You could do everything right numerically,
and you could show a lot of vitality and
write beautiful essays, but if you're in the
regular decision pool at a school like
Northwestern or Duke where they've
already admitted 51 or 52% of their class in
their early decision round,  even if they
love you, they may decide there is no
room. So the timing of your application
can absolutely be a choice you make that
impacts that admissions decision.
04. What activities should I
be doing to get into a top
university?
What activities you explore to show
intellectual vitality doesn't always have to
match up to the major. You're showing that
you have it in your DNA to be one of those
students that takes ownership of a project
and runs with it. 
And that's really what we’re looking for as
admissions officers as we break down the
applications — we want to know if this
student has it in their DNA to go for it.
05. Is it ok to apply
undecided?
You can certainly apply undecided. Just
keep in mind that you have to be aware of
the type of college you are applying to. For
example, let’s say you're applying to
Georgia Tech, you can be undecided, but is
that indecision about your entering the
school of engineering or school of business
for example? 
I think one mistake students can make is
they really don't take time to understand
the structure of universities they are
applying to. You should take the time to
understand every college’s structure, and
then view each one of those schools as
having their own separate door, and you
need to understand which door is easier or
harder for you to open.
06. How has the level of
competition amongst
applicants changed over
your career?
I think now, it's a really smart, savvy, well-
resourced global teenage population. I feel
that the numeric piece of the puzzle has
gotten stronger. I have noticed an
intellectual maturity that I think is sort of
beyond their years. I've been in this industry
as either a teacher or counselor or an
admissions officer for 25 years, and I am
definitely seeing things going on today that
intellectually are pretty special, and in that
way, I've seen a lot of movement and
change in the process.
07. What’s the best essay
you have read?
One of my favourite ones was  a student
that wrote about her habit. Her habit was
she always dressed nice for school, much
nicer than anyone really needed to. But
she had this brilliant point that was: "Right
now in my life, I don't have a lot of control.
My dad cooks my dinner, I don't get to
cook what I'm going to eat, and my school
tells me what classes I'm taking. But in
that tiny sliver of my life that I have control
over, where I can make a choice, I choose
to exceed people's expectations. And for
now it's just how I dress, but wait till I get
to your school. Wait till I become a doctor.
Wait till I exceed those expectations.” 
 It was the best essay. I just thought that
she had taken that habit and then used it
to say, "here's what it really tells you about
me,” and that was really powerful.
08. What if I don’t get
accepted into my dream
university?
I always tell students that never take a
denial from a university personally. It's really
quite frankly often a matter of fit. If we
made the comparison to an amusement
park, it's like looking at the sort of rides that
my university offered and saying, "gosh, I
just don't think that our rides really fit with
what this student is about."

09. How will COVID-19 affect

admissions?
As some students will have the SAT or ACT
and others won’t, as an admissions officer,
I’m going to really look closely at those
teacher recommendation letters now. I
think they're going to provide me with
much needed context. So to students out
there who have experienced their classes
moving online, my recommendation is to
be that engaged student. Ask those
questions so that when the teachers write
recommendation letters they include
comments like: "Even in this difficult time,
this student was completely engaged in
the learning process." 

 I would also like to add that many times,

private universities ask the “Why”
supplemental question —  “Why are you
applying to my university?” I really think
this question has taken on added
importance in the evaluation process.

For extracurricular activities, the advice I

give here is to first think small. Colleges are
going to recognize that it's not quite so
easy to do some of the things students
used to be able to do. They're not expecting
you to cure the disease or to save the world,
but they want to see what you can achieve
in a world that has had to think small...think
community. So by community, it could be
your class community, it could be your
street, it could be your church's
community. And then finally basically think
impact, what can I be doing to help?
10. Will COVID-19 affect the
amount of financial aid that
is offered?
I think to really understand how much
COVID-19 will affect financial aid, we need
to consider what’s happening in the US. I've
been reading lots of articles about
universities that are already experiencing
financial crunches, there are hiring freezes
that have happened at universities that I
assumed had pretty deep pockets. So in
that way, I think that the ability to pay
might play a larger role in an admissions
decision than it has in the last two decades
or so, just the ability for the students to say
or the families to say, "we can pay the
tuition," is going to be something that'll be
a choice the colleges make.

11. If a school says they’re

“test optional”, will I be at an
advantage if I do sit the SAT
or ACT?
The advantage of taking the SAT or ACT is
that it speaks to an admissions officer in
that we can say: “I know what this student
has….this is data that I can sink my teeth
into”. So I would continue to sign up for
exams. As they get canceled, just move
onto the next one. Try and get in a test
because I do think that submitting a score
will be an advantage.

12. Should I acknowledge

COVID-19 in my application?
I would say an admissions offer might
consider how a student addresses it. For
example, I would be talking about this
through my activities list. To an
admissions officer, if the student mentions
it, but then there is no evidence that they
tried to work with or help their
community, then that might pose a few
questions. Again, you need to go back to
what I said before about thinking small.
Show you're doing what you can do within
the context. Have something there that
shows that you are cognizant of other
people in this process and you were doing
your best to try and be helpful.
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