<p>I just got a letter back, but I am confused as to whether I've been rejected or not:</p>
<p>"After careful review of your application, the University's Admissions committee did not approve your request for admission under the Early Action option. However, your academic performance and personal qualifications are impressive. Therefore, your application will be held on file as a candidate for regular admission. The Admissions committee will review your application again, and you can expect a response on March 15th."</p>
<p>I'd appreciate anyone's opinion. It didn't say I was waitlisted, but it didn't <em>completely</em> reject me. I wish it would just say yes or no...</p>
<p>Neither. What you’ve been is deferred: moved from the early action pool of applicants to the regular decision pool. You’ll get an answer of “yes,” “no” or “wait list” along with the regular decision applicants.</p>
<p>Oh. I understand now. Thank you!</p>
<p>You’re welcome. </p>
<p>I’m sure this isn’t the answer you wanted from this college, but I hope you won’t take it too hard. Especially among early-action schools (as opposed to early decision), “deferred” is a very common result, and a significant number of deferred applicants are admitted later.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>That’s okay. Of course I would rather have been accepted, but at least they are still thinking about me. I’ll just have to give them a good enough reason to accept me.</p>
<p>What if you are deferred from your early decision school? Luckily this didn’t happen to my daughter, but my niece is experiencing this. Is this worse or about the same as being deferred as an Early Action applicant?</p>
<p>More or less the same. Early Action schools tend to be stingier with early admits than Early Decision schools, but in either case, many deferred students are admitted in the regular decision round.</p>
<p>Does anyone have data on this? I was told by an Ivy alumni interviewer that his school accepted only 7% of deferred candidates in the regular round last year. Is there someplace to find facts?
Also, I know one of CC numbers geniuses can tell me—how do deferred candates show up in admissions data? If someone is deferred ED, and accepted RD, do they show up in the ED numbers (as applied but not accepted) or the RD numbers? I’m assuming they are not double counted??</p>
<p>The percentage of students accepted in the RD round after first being deferred in the EA/ED round varies widely from school to school. For example, it’s around 20% at BC.</p>
<p>Usually deferred students are accepted at a slightly higher rate than the students who applied RD, unless the school automatically defers all students to the regular pool.</p>
<p>This makes sense if you think about it. The RD pool has students who are really reaching. Those students would have received an all out rejecting in the EA/ED pool.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
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<p>Was that dramatically different from the admit rate for the RD pool?</p>
<p>RD admit rate was around 12%, so the 7% deferral to accepted rate was lower than that.</p>
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<p>The opposite is also true at BC. The 20% acceptance rate for previously deferred students is actually lower than BC’s general acceptance rate of 27-29% in the RD round.</p>