“When you apply to colleges, you tend to expect one of two answers: acceptance or rejection. For the academic year of 2018-2019, 6,630 students applied to Harvard University under the Early Action program. Of those students, 938 were accepted and 611 were outright denied. The majority - 4,882 applicants - were deferred and many were left wondering what this meant for their chances.” …
The first thing that any deferred student should do is determine what the RD admission rate has been for deferred students in previous years. Actually, you should probably figure this out before you even hear from the school. This is particularly true if you are considering ED2 at another college. At some schools that have very high deferral rates, the odds of getting in RD are very poor, even worse than the normal RD admission rate. That may seem counterintuitive, but it makes sense if you think about it. If your application wasn’t good enough to get you in on the time around, it probably won’t be the second time either.