<p>i called umich and i asked what the percentage was for ppl who were deferred to actually get in..and she said for the past couple of years, "no one has gotten off the waitlist". and i was like...uh u mean no one who was deferred got in? and she was like yeah, but years before that, people have.</p>
<p>SO, i'm thinkin either deferred ppl do not get in, or she mistook "deferral" for "waitlist". </p>
<p>hopefully she meant waitlist..</p>
<p>She DEFINITELY meant waitlist. In the past years 50% of those deferred have been accepted.</p>
<p>thats bull cuz my counselor from Umich said that they DEFINATELY accept deferred kids...</p>
<p>Don't freak out over it... it was a misunderstanding. I know several people who were deferred last year who are students there now. They wouldn't defer people if they ended up not accepting any of them.</p>
<p>when you call Michigan you are most likely talking to a current student who either felt like dicking around with you, or confused your question on his little chart of answers.</p>
<p>guapocarlos: "when you call Michigan you are most likely talking to a current student who either felt like dicking around with you, or confused your question on his little chart of answers."</p>
<p>LOL!!</p>
<p>lol she sounded pretty sincere, i have a feeling she just got really confused...</p>
<p>either way, i'm glad to know she prolly misunderstood me. thanks for all the responses!</p>
<p>Michigan accepts deferred students...a lot of them. You probably confused deferred with waitlisted. As far as I know, Michigan has not accepted a single wait-listed student in years.</p>
<p>One of the reasons it's hard to say is that there are people who waiting because they are deferred and people who are waiting because they haven't heard anything yet, and many of these people are in exactly the same boat.</p>
<p>The only difference? One group got a letter.</p>
<p>And who gets a letter versus who doesn't (and the proportion of each) may vary each year.</p>
<p>On a bit of a side note....I think that the behavior of applicants--although it's completely understandable--is providing a disincentive for universities to use an official defer letter. Inevitably, after defer letters are sent out, it sets off a flurry of phone calls from parents, students, counselors, alumni--applicants want to send in new essays, additional recommendations, and updated lists of activities. They pull each and any string they can conceive of. And all those calls and letters and additional materials have to be dealt with (even if they won't influence the ultimate decision).</p>
<p>So it's my fear that admissions offices are having to make some unappealing choices. When they have a group of students they can't act upon yet, the considerate thing would be to acknowledge their app and update them of the time issue with a defer letter. But they know this will start an avalanche of "deferral reversal" attempts that may slow the process down for all applicants. To not let students know anything, though, isn't very service-oriented. Rock and hard place!</p>
<p>I feel the deferral situation has gotten almost ridiculous at many schools this year. Seems almost everybody is getting deferred with very very few rejections. Even at the ivy schools with their ED policy kids who are unqualified are being deferred when they would have in years past been rejected.</p>
<p>What happened to being deferred simply because you were a qualified student not of the minority who had to wait to make sure the racial quotas (diversity) were filled before they could be accepted. That seems to be how it worked in the past.</p>
<p>Well, my first guess (assuming that WAS the way things used to be done...) I'd say it was because schools don't have racial quotas.</p>
<p>sorry I usually try my best to stay away from any affirmative action discussions as it oftens turns into having a racist context. All I was trying to say is it seems like they are looking more for quality of student this year and less on diversity. In the past they have used the deferrals as a way to place qualified kids who are not minority students so they can get the diversity they need and then allocate the remaining student slots to deferred students. I fully realize schools can't have racial quotas, and that it would be illegal to do so, but I also find it hard to believe they don't have some sort of an idea of what percentages they want for their diversity.</p>
<p>Okay, that makes sense.</p>
<p>In fact, for reasons I don't know, taken as a group underrepresented minority students do tend to apply later in the admissions "season" than their non-minority counterparts. So it's definitely true that a school who wants to maintain their diversity can't fill up the class before the application deadline. They've got to leave some room. </p>
<p>However, given the overall proportion of URMs at most colleges, it's probably not the case that leaving space for URM applicants (and potential URM applicants) causes a large number of non-minorities to be deferred. It may, however, contribute to the delay some students experience.</p>
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<p>That is not entirely true...someone from my school was accepted last year after being on the waitlist.</p>
<p>Are you sure Arb? That sounds very suspecious. Michigan's target class has been exceeded each of the last 6 years. Last year, Michigan aimed for a class of 5,500 and got 6,000+ to enroll. I don't see how Michigan would dip into its wait-list unless it made a mistake and rectified it.</p>
<p>Alexandre, it's possible that one of the smaller schools (like music) went to the waitlist for a particular instrument--but I'd be surprised.</p>