@PikachuRocks15
- Financial Background:
Admission officers will pick up on information that suggests you come from a low-income background. For example, your application shows you have a fee waiver, your parents' occupations, or you mention it in your writing. Admission officers are underdog champions and they pull for students who have excelled despite coming from low-income homes.
These schools are need-blind in this sense: If you ask for financial aid, that request isn’t held against you. They don’t factor your ability to pay for school into your admission decision. But there’s a big caveat: if you’re an international student, don’t ask for aid unless you’re exceptional and have an extremely compelling story.
- Geography:
Check out post #18.
- Deferrals and Letters of Interest:
Deferral usually means you were more than competitive but just missed the compelling standard. You’re right on the line. Here’s my best general advice: do something to improve your application and update your admission officer about it, but don’t overdo it.
If you get deferred in December, you should have new updates to provide your admission officer: activities, awards, grades, scores, something to say about a spring semester internship. But during Regular reading season (roughly December to March), your reader is fully engaged in evaluating applications. So I’d say one concise, good update email; maybe two if you really have something new and exceptional to report.
- AP scores/SAT II v SAT/ACT:
In a typical year, your SAT or ACT matters much more than AP scores or SAT IIs. At many schools, the latter are optional.
- Early vs Regular:
Stanford doesn't give you any advantage if you apply Early. But some schools care about demonstrated interest. And statistics counsel you to apply Early. For example, last year Harvard accepted about 14% students Early Action, but only 4% Regular. For Early Decision, Dartmouth took 23% compared to 6% and Wash U in St. Louis took 42% compared to 13%. But let’s add some nuance to those numbers.
First, when you apply early, you’re up against the stiffest competition. Because anyone applying early has their stuff together and they are happy with their application. So it’s harder to stand out. And the higher acceptance rates reflect a more talented pool.
Second, guess where new readers train? Early admission. You don’t really know what it takes for a student to earn admission until you’ve gone through committee in Early and see what an admitted student looks like. School like Stanford with single-digit acceptance rates train you to be exacting. So students who might get rejected in Early, could get accepted in Regular once admission officers get a feel for the pool.
Bottom line: If you have a goal school, you should apply to it Early, and Early Decision if possible. But only if your application is as strong as it can be.
If not, here’s what I would do: Apply Early Action to a target school. This way you may have an acceptance in hand at a solid school you’re happy with in early December—at least you know you’re in somewhere—and you may get a slight boost depending on the school.
Then, I’d spend now until January 1 making your application better. Because the Regular pool is watered down. So even though the statistics don’t bear it out, a compelling application is more likely to stand out in Regular.
–MCS