<p>Do trends show that UChicago defers more early action applicants than the norm? Or less?</p>
<p>I sure someone will come up with some actual numbers from somewhere, but if I recall correctly, EA last year was about 1/3 (or slightly less) admit, 1/3 defer, and about 1/3 deny.</p>
<p>I don’t think Chicago has traditionally denied that many. I know a couple of years ago one of the admissions staff posted something on their blog about how it was the first time they had deferred more people than they had admitted or denied, combined, which I took to mean that about half the pool was deferred. That year, it would have meant that about 10% were rejected outright. </p>
<p>As application numbers go up, both EA and RD, I’m sure the trend is to reject more EA applicants definitively, to keep them out of the RD pool. Still, pending any changes from new management, I think the Chicago culture is oriented more to deferring people at the EA stage rather than rejecting them.</p>
<p>I remember from EA results last year on CC that there were many many deferrals and only a few rejections. (In fact, I think I can only remember one or two rejections.) However, keep in mind it’s (obviously) not an unbiased pool. Students who post on CC tend to be stronger than the average applicant, and I’m willing to bet there were some people who didn’t post their results at all.</p>
<p>From the Admissions Blog December 2008:
</p>
<p>Not much help. From what I understand, however, last year was a record year for deferrals.</p>
<p>^ OK, so if the admission rate was 35%, that pretty much meant that the outright rejection rate couldn’t have been above 25% or below 5%. And when they accepted 40% EA, they deferred less than 40%, so that implies maybe 20-25% rejections.</p>