<p>Hello all---</p>
<p>ED is a complicated situation and every year is different, so it is difficult to predict what will happen. I'm sorry that johni didn't get much insight from his call. There are generally three reasons why someone might be deferred: </p>
<p>1) the student was working on a downward trend in the junior year and we'd like to see a full-semester's grade report before we feel confident about his/her rebound.
2) there is some kind of anomaly in the student's record that we're hoping to have some type of explanation for. (i.e. a great student with a grade of D somewhere the record and no explanation for why in the world this great student got that one poor grade)
3) the student is "on the bubble" and we're waiting to determine how a this borderline student will look in the context of a greater applicant pool. </p>
<p>What does this mean for your student? Well, if it is one of the first two reasons, please give us some context about you believe the hang-up to be. If it is the 3rd, it might be worth re-taking standardized tests to see if your student will look better if they take the ACT for the first time (another example). If he/she took recent tests that we've seen (Oct/Nov) then there isn't likely to be a big difference, but if they didn't take tests since May or June, it could be another matter. If your grades or curriculum were off the mark, it is too late to change it now, I'm sorry to say, and you'll just have to hold tight and let us see who your competition is going to be.</p>
<p>The ED pool was larger, but the preliminary profile doesn't look tremendously different than last year and interestingly enough the aid applicants did not increase proportionally. We meet aid through the same packaging we use for all students, meeting 100% of demonstrated eligibility with grant as the foundation of the award. No student receives more than $4000 with a combination of need-based loans and work study. </p>
<p>Women applicants tend to have higher grade point averages and men tend to have slightly better test scores. Because there are usually greater numbers of female applicants, there is statistically more competition for women applicants while the profile is very similar to the men (except for the description above, showing that boys tend to mature a little later in school, but their achievement catches up and their preparation is also excellent). </p>
<p>I'm not sure how to comment on 252525's question about how to help counsel your daughter. I suppose the best advice is that any student who is deferred needs to be aware that he or she is on the bubble and needs to evaluate the range of schools to which he/she should be applying to during the Regular Decision round to be sure that he/she has several schools which are not quite as selective as Richmond but that offer similar features in terms of environment, size, programs and etc. There are students every year who are successfully admitted after having been deferred, but the numbers are not overly encouraging. It is honestly a wait and see situation. </p>
<p>I hope that is general enough to help you direct her to walk the tight rope between giving up on us (if there had been no chance, honestly we'd have denied her up front) and continuing to search and explore her other options. It is a hard place to be, but it is not like a lot of adults in job-searching mode and other areas of the life and therefore this can be viewed in the context of the college admission world serving as a place to learn real life lessons. </p>
<p>Happy Holidays to all!</p>