<p>^ Thank you. :)</p>
<p>so being deferred means like it gets reconsidered with the regular admissions?</p>
<p>@kismet: yes</p>
<p>What I hate most about being deferred is this feeling of helplessness.</p>
<p>I honestly don’t know what I can improve on my application. Grades and SAT scores are fine. In my opinion, my essays were kind of crappy, although I’ll never know how good they really are (I did spend lots of time on them, but…). Either way, I can’t change the essays. I’m studying my butt off for the AMC Contest come February, but MIT won’t even know if I qualify for AIME or USAMO because the Update Form is due before the qualifications are announced.</p>
<p>What should I do? Staring at my application just makes me feel kind of queasy. Every time I look at my ECs I fill up with an awkward kind of regret and self-loathing. The things I love that I put on the application look childish now, but it’s not like I can change them. I realize now that the only STEM things on my app are math contests and science contests, shallow things that don’t represent “real” knowledge or understanding. I’ve never done research, and I probably won’t anytime soon. I wish I knew earlier how bad my choices would turn out to be.</p>
<p>Whatever tl;dr I realize now that I’m dumb, and I just wish that there was something I could do, if not put myself in a better light, theen at least to get out of the shade.</p>
<p>Stormcloud, <em>hugs</em>, I’m so sorry.</p>
<p>Your hard work and achievements are as real and significant now as they were a week ago, and they will continue to be real and significant. MIT is not the beginning and end. Please don’t let this pull you down.</p>
<p>Would you mind if I quoted what you wrote in the blog post?</p>
<p>^I would be honored to be on an MIT blog post.</p>
<p>I still feel like they’re real, I just start to wonder about the significance. It’s not just about MIT; the deferral makes me question whether I’ve spent these 4 years of high school in a good way.</p>
<p>I think there are some misconceptions in this thread.</p>
<p>Generally, getting in early action is somewhat harder than from the regular pool. People aren’t deferred because MIT thinks they may improve their app over the few months since they submitted it for early action. They are deferred because they think the candidate may be admitted in the regular pool. </p>
<p>Even if the early action pool was stacked with super impressive candidates, MIT won’t take that many early because they want to at least give people in the regular pool a chance to be evaluated. </p>
<p>An overly simplistic way of looking at it is that getting deferred means that you aren’t in the top x% of candidates they will admit in terms of some subjective measure (not necessarily intelligence). Note that I said of candidates they will admit, not all applicants.</p>
<p>If you do have additions to your resume’, by all means submit them. However, the point of deferring candidates is not to demand that they improve their record.</p>
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<p>Why? Stormcloud, you’re there. You may not get in to MIT, but Admissions has directly told you that that’s only because of space. They do not defer people unless they want those people to attend - it’s just that there’s not always room. I realize that’s a hard pill to swallow, but in terms of looking back on your own accomplishments, you should be proud. You are good enough for MIT.</p>
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<p>Heck, I had no STEM activities on my application. That’s not what Admissions is looking for. They want to know a simple thing - are you going to take advantage of MIT’s opportunities? MIT has loads of them, in all sorts of areas. Are you the type of person who pursues things, or do you just wait for things to come to do/complete the list you’re given? </p>
<p>You also should show some interest in science - you need to get through the GIRs, at least. But that doesn’t mean it has to be your main extracurricular (though it certainly can be!).</p>
<p>In the end, you might not get in. But you’re the type of person who will succeed no matter where you go, because you are driven to find interesting things and do them. Which isn’t to say not getting into MIT will hurt, if it comes to that - but it’s not the end of the world, and it doesn’t mean there’s a thing wrong with you.</p>
<p>tl;dr - You’re clearly awesome enough for MIT to want you, so stop beating yourself up.</p>
<p>Q&A about deferred students with MIT admissions officer Matt McGann
[Deferred</a> Applicants Q & A | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/deferred-applicants-q-a]Deferred”>Deferred Applicants Q & A | MIT Admissions)</p>
<p>In the comments section of the above link, Matt McGann mentions that a few hundred (~300) students who apply early and are deferred end up getting admitted in the regular action pool.<br>
~400 students out of 1000 early action applicants get admitted directly from the early action pool (not deferred). About 2/3 of early action applicants are deferred.</p>
<p>What you should take away from this is that being deferred signifies only that of the people who apply early and will be admitted <em>eventually</em> (in early or regular), you are at best in the bottom 60%. Put in another terms, it’s like they went through and found 700 people that they though should be admitted, and then decided to admit the 300 they wanted the most during the early pool and then plan to admit 400 people during the regular pool. Of course, they haven’t actually made the decision about those 400 who will be admitted later but I just wanted to illustrate how many people would end up being shunted into regular action who will be admitted later.</p>
<p>It also means that you are in the top 2/3 of applicants overall in the early action pool, because about 1/3 of applicants are outright rejected. </p>
<p>So being deferred doesn’t tell you a whole lot of information, and there is no sense in frantically trying to figure out what needs to be corrected.</p>
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And then there are those of us who had missing recommendation letters or low grades with possibility of improvement? What does bottom 60% mean? What does that mean? (It’s a rhetorical question. I know what it means.)</p>
<p>Well, I hope I clarified that by what I just added to my post #29. This would be easier with a venn diagram. Remember I said that being deferred only means you are at best in the bottom 60 percent of people who will be <em>admitted</em>.</p>
<p>I don’t think the number of people who have missing rec letters is significant. If you do having missing rec letters, then obviously that’s a pretty good reason for deferral. As for having low grades, you have 3 years of grades already so I don’t think that last semester impacts your record much.</p>
<p>Unless I am misunderstanding you, I fundamentally disagree with the reason you seem to think people are deferred. In general, the vast majority of the 2500 people who are deferred weren’t deferred because they have the potential to be admitted if they fix some flaw in their application. It is simply that they weren’t the top few of the early action pool that MIT wanted to take immediately.</p>
<p>I wasn’t trying to imply that I was having trouble with your logic.</p>
<p>I think it’s ridiculous to be telling people who were deferred that they are in the bottom anything. They’re not even at MIT yet. The comparisons don’t need to happen, and they certainly don’t need to start happening <em>now.</em> Forget that there isn’t a way to compare or rank MIT students or applicants that takes into account the wide, wide variety in talents and ways of approaching life and work (and the wide, wide variety in the situations that applicants might find themselves in when admissions goes into committee). There is no bottom 60%–not in the students and not in the applicant pool.</p>
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Well I dunno, I kind of tanked my junior year because I thought self-studying AP exams was more interesting than classes and then I just up and didn’t come back. And I didn’t exactly have straight As before that. So I can see why MIT would be interested in my first semester grades at a university and the recommendation letter my research advisor couldn’t write by the first deadline because she was hosed with grant proposals. But maybe I’m just in the bottom 60%. Whatever the hell that means.</p>
<p>It wasn’t meant to be derogatory, and certainly not something that should carry over into how they view themselves as students. Anyway, it’s already clear that admissions is subjective anyway and not based necessarily on academic talent. Qmech’s talented acquaintance was waitlisted and then admitted, and then graduated at the top of his class at MIT; but in terms of admissions, he wasn’t one of the “top” people that MIT adcoms wanted–for whatever reason.</p>
<p>As for not making comparisons, students are already making comparisons anyway. Obviously comparisons already happened–that’s what admissions is. But you have a bunch of people on this thread who are deferred who want to know what the (relative) deficiency is that needs to be addressed before they are admitted. And that’s because you told them that was why they were deferred. From the info that has been provided by people on this thread, <em>none</em> of the people are in that situation of having any deficiency. </p>
<p>Let me ask you this question: why are some people admitted early and some people deferred and then admitted? Is it because most people deferred and then admitted improved their application 1st semester senior year?</p>
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Oh I know. But that still doesn’t mean that you should be telling applicants who were deferred that they are “at best in the bottom 60%” if they are lucky enough to get in. Forget that it’s meaningless. It’s primarily just mean.</p>
<p>Maybe I should just stop coming back to College Confidential. This and the evolution thread. I am just done.</p>
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<p>It’s not mean. It’s whatever the evaluation of adcoms right now in terms of priority for admission. Literally, the people admitted early were a higher priority for admission right now than the ones deferred. That’s it. Like I said, Qmech’s friend was waitlisted and got admitted and was one of the true academic stars here and also had leadership roles. If you’ve been around here long enough, you should know that I don’t view how adcoms view applicants as much more than a subjective opinion.</p>
<p>By the way, I used the term “at best” in the bottom 60% of people who will be admitted from the early pool because there is the chance that they will be rejected. Personally, if I was told that more than half of the people admitted eventually from the early pool were deferred, I would be excited, regardless of semantics.</p>
<p>No one cares what you do in high school by the time you get to college. And I say this as an IBO Gold Medalist.</p>
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<p>Have I implied otherwise?</p>
<p>How much do you think that semifinalist status in Intel STS would help? Would it be a game-changer?</p>
<p>Also, in the update I send in to MIT, do you think it would be appropriate to write a kind of plea-type essay? Like I would go in depth how I did everything that I could with the information and resources available to me, etc. I wouldn’t make it a supplication or try to be bossy or anything, of course. I’m just wondering if such an essay could be effective or would just be an annoyance.</p>
<p>I don’t feel like I ever really “sold” myself, so to speak, in my application, though I did talk about my motivation. But I think that application readers would really be exposed to “me” more in a persuasive kind of essay, since I like to argue and am not the greatest writer when it comes to more frivolous things that may not excite me as much (like departments at MIT). But I don’t want them to think that I’m entitled or trying to angrily argue with them (I’m arguing on my behalf, not over their decision). Hope this makes sense</p>
<p>huehue,
Take your time before sending in supplement. Don’t plead. Perhaps you will do something special in the next few months, or be accepted into a selective summer program. Maybe you will ask for an additional recommendation. Sometimes it comes down to not having taken a certain course, like physics, and schools like MIT/Caltech want to see you are taking such a course.</p>