EA / ED Soft Deny ?

Applying to College
1

<p>I see many schools have many , many defers and very few outright denials.
I suspect that many schools defer all non accepts to the RD pool.
I would be interested to see if any colleges have an official policy on this manner.</p>

<p>Any thoughts?</p>

<p>A Providence College adcom referred to this as a soft deny , don't know the origin of this phrase. Providence did defer and deny and denies for EA.<br>
Quote from PC - Providence</a> College: Scott Seseske</p>

<p>"There are many students who are just a notch below the top of our pool (the students we invited) who received defer letters in the mail... And it is important to note here that when we defer a student EA, it is because we do see that student being competitive in our Regular Decision review process - in other words, a defer should not be interpreted as a "soft deny." For students who are deferred, their applications will be considered again during the Regular Decision review process in the context of our entire applicant pool.</p>

<p>In addition to inviting and deferring students EA, we also denied a number of students at Early - this is a final decision and students who received an EA deny cannot apply again during Regular Decision. The reason we deny students at Early is because our review processes are very similar at Early and Regular... and therefore, if a student is clearly not competitive in our EA pool, we know that he/she will not be competitive in our Regular Decision pool either. So, instead of deferring that student knowing that we will eventually deny him or her in March, we feel it is better for the student to learn the decision in December so he/she can move on to other college options."</p>

2

<p>Why would they do that?</p>

3

<p>PC is explaining that a defer is not a soft deny. Defers, in many instances, are a notch below EA admits. PC denies many EA applicants because they do not want to give false hope.</p>

4

<p>Even if deferrals aren't "soft denies", deferred people are still "backups"--just in case RD pool is really weak, etc.</p>

<p>Still, I don't understand some schools like Yale would defer 40%... that's just TOO much. :/ I'd rather just know than having to think about it for another 3 months. Kind of cruel, really.</p>

5

<p>at UGA, if you apply EA, you only submit SAT and Transcript. If you are deferred, you do the ECs and essays. So its not a soft deny, they want to just make sure you are good enough.</p>