If you get deferred from a college, consider this strategy as you await your final decisions. https://insights.collegeconfidential.com/college-deferral-plan
Great advice . I really think that having strong grades senior year can make a huge difference. There are (too!) many seniors who see academic achievement in high school as little more than part of an extended admissions test for college. If you can show that you are a dedicated student right through to the end, this may really separate you from the pack. Especially if you get deferred and waitlisted!
Most top schools have a very high deferral rate, 70-90% get deferred so be hopeful but stay realistic.
@riversider Really? I never heard that stat. Is it true that most “top schools” either accept or defer then? Too bad schools never release the percentage of kids who were deferred and ultimately accepted.
In the early round, the result for an applicant is:
A. Admit.
B. On the “borderline” – possibility of admit, waitlist, or reject, depending on comparison to the regular round applicants.
C. Far below the “borderline” – very unlikely to be anything but reject, unless the regular round applicant pool is far weaker than typical or expected.
Supposedly, some colleges (supposedly including Stanford) will only defer category B and deliver reject notices to category C, but other colleges will defer most of category C as well as B.
@ucbalumnus right. In which case, doing all of this follow up is a waste of time for those in bucket C. I knew a number of kids who were deferred in EA from Michigan and I knew they had NO chance of getting in yet they were hopeful to the bitter end. Really unfair for schools to not cut some kids loose.
Google deferral rates for Georgetown to open your eyes.
Duke defers about 18% of the ED class (903 / 4,852) which is almost the same number of ED acceptances 882. Of the 903 that are deferred to RD, about 10% actually get accepted versus 5.7% of the general RD population.
Just a general comment and speculation but I’m pretty sure that accepting a larger % of deferred applicants is important as Duke knows this was these students’ top college choice (from ED) and their yield is going to be much higher if accepted than the general RD group.
Some schools (Penn comes to mind) have been more transparent about the defer to admit path.
It’s not terribly different from a school creating a WL of 850 students when the freshman class size is 500.
But some kids will get in after a deferral (or later, WL). Not most. The advice here is designed to makes your odds as good as they can be in a game where the odds are against you.
I DO think it’s too bad that most people don’t know this. I certainly didn’t! It was my quest for this (in the hours following a deferral!) that led me to CC years ago.
@Riversider what’s the scoop with Georgetown EA and deferral?
Go to collegedata.com for deferral data. Under admissions tab of a school. It will let you know how many were offered wait list, how many accepted wait list and how many got in off list.
Not every school reports this data, but it could be useful
@HappyNJ , that is helpful, but WL comes from RD round. Deferral comes from ED round and is generally not disclosed in that data.
I think one of the hardest decisions that comes from an ED1 deferral is whether to ED2 somewhere else. It MAY improve your odds of acceptance at the second school but you are agreeing to give up a second shot at the ED1 school if ED2 works. In this regard, it would be so so much better to know what that ED1 deferral really meant. If it was “You are a legacy whom we cannot admit so we are letting you down gently on the hope that your parents will still donate”, that is quite different from “you were totally qualified but we see lots like you and we need to see you in the context of the RD pile but you stand a real chance”.
Schools defer students for a lot of reasons, from wanting to encourage future applicants to needing a second look to not irritating alum parents. Unfortunately, the deferral letter doesn’t come with a reason code!
That last paragraph should be bolded and pinned to the top of the CC board!
Not feeling cranky this am, but I disagree with the basics in the link.
Starts with, “present all your significant accomplishments and new activities since…”
Foremost, you need to understand what’s significant to those adcoms. It’s not a novel (unless you receive broad acclaim.) Not some new pie club you founded, etc… Not, hey, I play guitar better than 2 months ago. And raising your grade to an A- highlights it wasn’t any A before.
Be careful.
It’s not how perfect you think the match is, for your wants. It’s what matches theirs. Nor is it magic to make 3 contacts with the rep. It’s the quality of what you do share and the picture that presents.
One needs to pull this off right.
I think the advice is good, though pretty obvious.
My son was deferred from one of his high choices. He sent a couple update letters highlighting actual new info and continued interest and he was ultimately accepted (but did not attend.) My daughter was waitlisted from her #1 choice. She kept in contact and even scheduled a 2nd campus visit. On our way to that visit came the happy news that she had moved to ‘accepted.’ She is attending there now.
At the end of the day, a deferral isn’t the end of the world. I think possibly the most important next step is sending in supplemental materials (assuming the schools permits it) such as awards won, leadership positions assumed, and updates to your senior schedule, if any. If they reject you from the early round and they don’t have any supplemental materials to see that anything’s changed, they’ll probably stick with their initial reaction of ‘this application wasn’t quite good enough, they would need something else to push them over the edge.’