<p>I'll be deferring next year regardless of my decision (studying for a year in Israel), but I was thinking about reapplication to Harvard or maybe some other schools.
I have Cornell as a back up, having already been accepted into Arts & Sciences, but it's so far away compared to the other schools I wanted to attend (I live in Boston).
So, do kids who reapply get automatically rejected? What's the deal here?</p>
<p>You probably want to ask yourself what your reasons for applying to Harvard before you even start at Cornell are. If Harvard sees that you're so driven by the name and don't actually have much of a reason to want to go there aside from it being better than Cornell, you ultimately won't stand out in the way that will make you an acceptable candidate. Generally, being admitted upon reapplication requires you to have something particularly new to add to your story, specifically a different voice or motives. I hate to say it, but thousands of applicants take a year off to go to Israel, especially female Jewish applicants, so you'd have to find something more original than that to be passionate about if you want to woo the adcom.</p>
<p>I doubt that what you're doing will boost your chances. You'll just seem desperate to go to Harvard. If Harvard were granting admissions based on how badly students wanted to go there, probably it would have a 90% accept rate.</p>
<p>Last year, someone on CC reapplied to Harvard after applying EA then getting deferred and ultimately rejected. They were, however, accepted to MIT the first time Harvard rejected them. When they applied to Harvard again, after deluging CC with requests for how to tweak their app, they applied EA, were deferred, and I think either withdrew their app or were ultimately rejected. They definitely didn't get in. </p>
<p>My advice is to select one of the colleges that you've been accepted to. If you don't like any of them, then take a gap year and then apply to some different colleges, but don't keep dreaming that somehow a gap year will cause Harvard to send you an admission. Next year, it will be even harder to get into all colleges because even more students will be applying.</p>