Because everything posted in Reddit is accurate. 
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Harvard has historically deferred a very high percentage of REA candidates. Stanford historically has deferred very few and Yale and Princeton somewhere in the middle, although Yale flipped rejects and deferred this year (in the past, 50%+ deferred, this year 57% rejected). IMO, having a large deferred pool benefits Harvard. While I am pretty certain the deferred pile is already ranked and sorted from applicants who ājust missedā to āpretty much no chanceā at the other end, it gives them more choices to fill the class in RD, and maybe someone at the bottom does something spectacular in the meantime. Also more deferrals means they can be freer in giving ācourtesyā deferrals to legacies.
If you were rejected from Harvard with high stats, it probably means you need to reexamine your essays and potentially your LoRās. With such a low reject rate, something likely went off the rails there.
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Does anyone know the deferral acceptance rate
I am not aware any official figure, but it is probably not more than the regular admit rate. Best to reset expectations, move on and start to āloveā other schools. Sure update Harvard with any positive news but donāt expect a different outcome in the Spring.
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I assume that the rate is similar to the rate for regular decision.
DD got deferred.
UW 4.0, SAT 1600 (perfect score in one sitting), ACT 36, 10 APs (score 5s), a competitive private HS in northeast, founder of a non-profit that expanded internationally, national honor society VP, varsity team captain (national jr ranking #60 in the sport), president of multiple school clubs, RISE research intern. Interested in AI/CS and neuroscience.
No hooks. Asian Americanā¦
Last year they published exact numbers for accepted, deferred and rejected. This year they have only told us accepted, so itās hard to say. From other schools, it looks like the percentage of rejected went up a lot (e.g. Yale 38% to 57% I saw similar increase at another school but canāt remember which), but as of right now we have no insight into Harvardās numbers other than 7.9%/740 accepted. I havenāt even seen anybody post they were rejected and last year a bunch of people did.
Iām so sorry. Your daughter will be a superstar wherever she goes. Where else is she applying?
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Hard to understand honestly. She will do exceedingly well in RD at top schools and schools that are good fits. Non-profits donāt seem to do much for people anymore. But she is varsity captain and has stellar stats, and is clearly viewed as a leader. I hope she continues in RD at Harvard but also has some other schools she loves.
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Wow. While there must be disappointment now, I am sure she will end up at a great school if not Harvard. My D had great stats/ECās, etcā¦, not quite your Dās, and got rejected by H (even with coachās soft support) and Y (legacy). She ended up at a NE LAC which turned out to be the best outcome for her. Smaller classes, mentored and paid research with 2 professors, started 4 years varsity team. She ended up at a top research institute in Boston affiliated with H and MIT and now is working on a fully funded PhD. Smart/motivated kids will always make the best use of the opportunities given to them as I am confident your D will.
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Those are all great achievements, and she will obviously be successful (and happy) at any number of schools where Iām sure she will get in. Being deferred at this point is simply disappointing and could easily be a function of the challenging competition and element of luck/randomness.
Iāve been reading a number of threads after these EA decisions have come out, and thereās a lot of emphasis on āstatsā and Iāve had a thought, especially since the data confirm that nearly half of the non-ALDC admits to Harvard in the RD round are not from the top two academic deciles (and they accept fewer than 1 in six of those!). Iād wonder if anyone would suggest, maybe for one or two of the other schools she applies to, that she doesnāt submit both the 1600 and 36. My thinking is/was that a) the admissions committee sees a lot of over-engineered kids, and b) her GPA@ NE private school and APs clearly establish that she is academically top notch, and the single sitting 1600 already establishes a test-taking ability that is statistically more rare (few than 350-400 girls each year do that, versus several thousand for the 36 ACT). I suspect itās possible that when one submits both scores, it could be taken a little like, what, she didnāt think one was enough? Why did she spend her time doing both? Or, if she didnāt take the AP class but just the test, maybe not submit that one? People may have different opinions on this, but my D had one of last yearās single-sitting 1600s, and thatās how she approached it (and it didnāt hurt her, one data point I know). Again, there are a TON of other things going on, but thatās how we approached trying to avoid over-indexing on academics. Sometimes less can be more.
Thatās really a subset of the more general advice Iād give to anyone with such high performing stats: think about whether her essays (and LORs) will make the reader think, āI want to be this personās roommateā¦ I share her motivations and totally get why she started that charityā¦ She seems really quirky-interesting and Iād like to meet her and sheāll be great on campus.ā
My daughter didnāt address what she did with her summers, except one where she had a job. While I for example might put the RISE program on the activities list, Iām not sure I would suggest that she writes an essay about it (not saying your daughter did, just using it as an example). Theyāll know what RISE is and have opinions on itās worth, but maybe talk about something compelling that she learned about elsewhere, or a job she had, and especially, why she started that charity and how it makes her feel.. They have a short time to get to know our kids, and the essays are the primary mechanism for that to happen.
Focus and stories like these must be important, including and especially at Harvard. The admissions committee people are humans like you and me, and theyāre picking humans and creating a class.
Your mileage may vary. I sound pedantic. I hate disappointment, though I guess itās inevitable for this process. Good luck in RD at H and the other schools. Sheāll do great!
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Applications donāt get double counted anyway so deferrals donāt change the acceptance rate.
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Wow Iām so sorry to hear that! Thatās shocking. Was she devastated? What else could they have been looking for?? She sounds pretty incredible to me. Please tell her not to worry, she will go far in life no matter what she does.
Thatās an interesting theory. My D22 also has a single-sitting 1600, didnāt take the ACT and in many ways resembles @kv2022ās daughter (except substituting music for sports and she didnāt start a non-profit). She also received very strong support from her academically rigorous school. My D22 is a US citizen (so not in the international pool) and received an outright rejection from Stanford REA. Interestingly ā and perhaps this is the key takeaway ā her GC, who has many years of experience guiding students to top US universities, has advised my D22 to stay the course with her remaining US applications (ādonāt overthink the final applicationsā).
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I think itās fine to submit both SAT and ACT, and submitting an AP test that she did not take a class in is also fine and shows initiative.
I wouldnāt try to interpret results at all or overthink what to submit.
The important thing to remember is that Harvard is assembling a class and decisions are not about individuals in a hierarchical way. A perfect score doesnāt make that much difference. Proven talent on the oboe might make a difference if that contributes to an interesting mix for the class. For that matter, an extensive collection of butterflies or an intense interest in historic reenactments might make a difference. Who knows!
Harvard is interested in the cross-pollination that happens among students, and also has campus needs to fill. Harvard also likes to think its graduates will accomplish interesting things after graduation. It is just not about the highest scores and grades, which meet a benchmark and may certainly demonstrate a level of academic talent and preparation that would bode well for success, but are demonstrated by many applicants to top schools.
It should be reassuring that it really isnāt about the individual, or who is the smartest, or who is the best human being! Results will vary from year to year too. Deferral or rejection doesnāt say anything meaningful about the applicant and everything these young people have achieved is every bit as impressive as it was before Thursday at 7pm. Good luck to all as they submit applications to other great schools!
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A lot of great perspectives and advice have been offered in this thread after REA decision day.
I donāt have much to add except to note that when things moved into the online applications era, creating this boom in multiple applications from each candidate with comparatively much smaller increase in the numbers of qualified candidates and no increase in the number of available seats, it essentially created a randomizing assignment condition for many exceptional candidates to selective schools.
This is why @LostInTheShuffle 's GCs advice is so sound: just continue with the process because some fundamental features of it are not as much about direct assessments of individual applicants as they are about the ānoisyā nature of admissions decisions and the vast number of applications. Every person is unique and special, but when combined and evaluated in the tens of thousands, many of those unique attributesāeven if seemingly remarkable at the individual levelāget smoothed over because there are many, many remarkable applicants. That fact is not a judgement of the individual but inherent to the process.
If you are objectively an excellent candidate even without a hook, the odds are very good that your perseverance in the admissions process will be rewarded, but perhaps not the way you originally envisioned. If you are open to that, current disappointments are likely soon to be a distant memory.
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Asian + STEM = Red Flag
Founder of anything = Red flag
National honor society for Asian = Red flag
Private HS = red flag (should have gone to public HS)
perfect scores in general for Asian = red flag
President of multiple clubs = red flag (nice chief, now she know to be an ā¦)
AI/CS for Asian = Red flag (Curse of the Asian strikes again)
MIT/Stanford/Princeton will lap her up
I sent you a message. Look for the green circle next to your landscape photo, in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
where is the redflags for caucations or any other races?
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My DSā24 has pretty much everything you listed except that he attended a public HS.
He ended up getting admitted into H/S (S waitlisted ā admitted) but got rejected by M/P.