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.’