<p>My son has received deferral decisions from three of his favorite schools, Lafayette, Dickinson and Marist. Still waiting to hear from two others.</p>
<p>Has anyone experienced what seems like an inordinate number of deferrals? Are schools looking to buy time to see what their top applicants do and want to keep other interested students "on hold"? Seems like there should be a better way for schools to handle the process.</p>
<p>My S got 4 deferrals from his EA schools… so far he has been accepted to 2 of the schools that deferred him, but still has yet to hear from the other 2. He was over the 75% at 3 of them. It was VERY weird as he has been accepted already to 2 RD schools that are more selective than he EA schools that deferred him.It was a tough month back in December, and I am not going to lie, we were freaked, but things are looking up. I have a heard of tons of deferrals this year… but I still can’t put my finger on the reason why.</p>
<p>Because the admissions process is becoming very much luck-based in many instances lately, people have begun applying to more less selective schools which they consider their safeties. However in most cases these schools realize they are safeties when they get applications from kids with very high stats. Some places accept those kids because they really those kids “deserve” to be accepted for their accomplishments (and I use “deserve” loosely here). Some accept them with the hope those kids will take them up on the offer (and occasionally offer merit money and special programs to them to sway them in their favor). And others defer or reject them because they dont want to play second fiddle to the better schools the kid likely applied to. In many cases, this tactic is also used to protect yield, because they don’t think the kid will choose them. Maybe the kid would’ve chosen them, but that’s just how the college interprets it.</p>