<p>Hi,</p>
<p>Does Harvard look at your application differently if you've been deferred as opposed to if you'd just applied RD? (I assume your application is marked deferred)</p>
<p>Last year only about 100 deferred students were admitted, and about 1000 RD+deferred in total. Does this mean that the committee intends to deliberately only admit about 100 deferred students? </p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Yes, the admissions committee expects to admit only about 100 from the deferred pool. The odds of being admitted from the deferred pool are about the same as the odds of being admitted from the RD pool.</p>
<p>My DD’s deferral letter stated the same sentiment expressed by Browniebaker - the percentage is expected to be highly similar between the RD pool and the deferrals. However, it did not indicate if that was an intentional decision (“quota”) or an estimate that the two pools will be largely similar.</p>
<p>In either case, the acceptance rate for RD and deferrals will be roughly 3 or 4 %. The number should be 800-1000 admits from 25-30k applicants. Harsh!</p>
<p>So the deferred students are competing with each other for some number of spots for deferred students, and not with the entire RA pool for about 800 spots left in general?</p>
<p>The idea behind deferral is that the admissions office wishes to be able to consider certain EA candidates in the same pool as the RD candidates. The fact that the deferred candidates met a November 1 deadline should have no bearing once they have been deferred to the RD deliberations. If the deferred candidates are considered to be as strong as the RD candidates will be, it makes sense that the admissions rate for the deferred candidates would be about the same as for the RD candidates.</p>
<p>If last year is any guide, Harvard will admit a little over 2000 students total, so it appears that there will probably be about 1100 or so students admitted during the Regular Decision process.</p>
<p>It’s pointless to try to derive anything from examining prior years’ deferrees’ eventual admit rate. The whole reason for the deferrees’ pool is to bundle them with the RD pool. If by quirk, TONS of great applicants come through RD, then naturally, fewer EA deferrees will get spots. If the opposite, then the opposite.</p>
<p>There is no reason to set any quota or goal for # admits from the deferree pool.</p>
<p>Thus, your analysis of that deferree rate has very little utility or correlation to what will actually happen.</p>