<p>Is it true that if you apply early and get deferred somewhere that you have almost no chance of getting in regular because your application is put on the bottom of the regular decision pile?</p>
<p>No. However, colleges handle defers differently. With some colleges, they only take auto-admits in ED, and then during RD, the applicant has an advantage because they have shown interest. In other colleges, they just see ED the same as RD except that it happens earlier. In this case, they have looked at the applicant already and something major is going to have to happen to the stats before the applicant will be accepted in RD. If you call the college, they will probably be able to tell you how many people were deferred last year and how many were eventually accepted in RD.</p>