Deferred with legacy

[jflan]

So I have a slight legacy advantage, my sister is currently a junior at Rice University.

I was unfortunately deferred in the ED round for Rice. I have heard that some schools defer legacy ED applicants and later reject them to avoid disgruntled families. Is this true for Rice? If not, are my chances lower, higher, or the same as any other applicant? (You can look at my stats and EC on my other thread)

[Faulkner1897]

Typically Rice does not reveal any information about ED, although this year there was press release indicating that the ED applications were up 19.5% (1960 applications). 330 domestic acceptances, which included 51 QuestBridge finalists. http://news.rice.edu/2017/12/18/rice-admits-first-students-of-class-of-2022-through-early-decision-program/

The only information I have seen on deferrals is from Rice’s own web page: http://futureowls.rice.edu/futureowls/defer_faq.asp

When the Committee on Admission wishes to see more information before making a final decision on an applicant in Early Decision, it defers the applicant into the Regular Decision plan. This allows time for more information to be added to the file, for example, updated senior grades, new SAT or ACT scores, additions of honors and accomplishments earned during the senior year, etc. Deferring an application also allows the Committee to look at the applicant in the context of the whole applicant pool, as opposed to just the Early Decision pool.

and

The Committee on Admission denies admission to the majority of Early Decision applicants in December. We defer only those applicants whom we intend to consider again later in the process, and we do ultimately admit a number of students from among those deferred.

Based on your past chance me thread, it looks like your stats and ECs are competitive, and it looks like you got a lot of solid advice in that thread. Based on your lower GPA before senior year, I suspect that Rice wants to have a full semester of senior grades to evaluate before making a decision. I don’t think Rice would string anyone along with a deferral that they don’t consider a competitive candidate, legacy or not.

I have heard that legacy is considered, although only for candidates who are truly competitive within the Rice applicant pool. I also heard (informally) that the legacy acceptance rate is about 30% (similar to legacy acceptance rate at peer schools). I heard this a few years ago, so things might have changed.

You are in a good spot, with an acceptance to UT in hand. Since you applied ED to Rice, and have a sibling there, it shows that you are very interested in Rice and will more than likely attend if accepted. This will certainly be a positive since Rice considers interest. But no one on college confidential can say what the Rice applicant pool will look like in RD, or what the impact will be of last year’s over-enrollment on number of acceptances. If Rice truly only defers a small percentage of the ED pool, your application will certainly be carefully considered again with your first semester senior grades.

Best of luck to you in the application process!

[jflan]

Awesome thank you for the advice! Would anyone happen to know the deferral statistics for this year? It seems to me a lot more people got deferred this year than in past years.