<p>I will be applying to Stanford early action and I remember the admissions officer at an info session saying that Stanford believes that when you apply early it is because you want to know early, so they do their best to either accept or reject you straight out. Those who get deferred are people that they genuinely want to look at again. I think that is a good policy, maybe not so much if your one of the rejects, but still; it's nice to know early. So I looked on their website and low and behold 50% are rejected early. So i'm wondering, if in the off chance I do get a deferred, can I be less upset? Does a deferred from Stanford mean more than others, aka my chance coming again for RD is better than an avg. deferreds chances? Does anyone have the statistics for those who are deffered and then get in rd (aka the overall EA acceptance rate)?</p>
<p>I believe the admission officer at the info session that I attended said that, on average, defers have higher chances in rd than normal rd.</p>
<p>These stats are hard to compare, since schools are not in the habit of releasing full data unless forced to.</p>
<p>Generally, I'd say that EA or ED deferreds are no less likely (Harvard), and in some cases far more likely (Yale) to be admitted than are "regular" RD applicants.</p>
<p>You have to look at raw numbers, however, and not just percentages.</p>
<p>At Harvard, 76% of SCEA applicants were deferred, and 21% admitted.</p>
<p>At Yale, the percentage of initial applicants admitted was lower, but the percentage (and actual number) of SCEA-deferreds later accepted was far higher - so that the percentage of those who applied early and eventially gained admittance was roughly 23% in each case.</p>
<p>The schools will say that the admissions edge often awarded to EA/ED deferreds has nothing to do with the assumption that they are more likely to enroll than other applicants in the RD pool. This may or may not be true. IMHO, schools DO tend to give an edge to the deferreds, if only to raise their "RD yield" - which, in most cases, is far below the juicy 80-99% yield on early admits.</p>
<p>I understand your points, I was just wondering if possibly stanford is an acception to this general rule, just because of their strict policy on deferred and rejected, it's almost like being deferred is a bit of an accomplishment of its own. I guess i'm trying to find some hope so that if I get deferred I can say, o well i have a better than avg. shot RD as opposed to if I was deferred somewhere else.</p>
<p>Deferred is more meaningful. I feel like they are telling you "we like you enough not to reject you, but we can't let you in just yet. We'll get back to you later on..."</p>
<p>I guess you can be less upset, but don't count on getting in - have a good backup plan!</p>