What does deferred really mean?

<p>Struggling to understand what deferred means. Other schools ask for first semester grades and will allow letters of recommendation. Illinois will not allow either. Therefore, as they want no additional knowledge about deferred candidates, is deferred really more about the school seeing if "better" candidates apply during regular decision? Have lots of kids' friends asking this over the weekend and would love someone from inside to give some insight. If it makes a difference, these are all engineering candidates. Thanks!</p>

<p>Yes, I’d say that’s a pretty fair definition…a school reviews an application and doesn’t think it warrants a flat-out rejection, but doesn’t think enough of it to commit to an acceptance…so they sort of “back-burner” it with a deferral until the pool of general applications comes in so they can compare it to that lot.</p>

<p>Others have suggested that it could also be a per school quota issue. In other words, if many kids from your high school with better stats than you use UIUC as a safety, you may be deferred. </p>

<p>Many of the kids that were deferred have significantly better stats than some showing up in CC as accepted so perhaps the school issue is coming into play.</p>

<p>Others can suggest anything they want, but JoBenny is correct. The application review is holistic. It is not solely dependent on standardized test scores and GPA. That’s why some with “better stats” are deferred/denied.</p>

<p>See it as “glass half full.” It means they like you enough to take another look.</p>

<p>LOL convincing a group of 17 year olds who worked hard to get great stats and who (based on Naviance data) expected to be admitted that the glass is half full is not so easy. They know they will be fine but, they still feel the sting. </p>

<p>Balthezar, are you saying that there is no limit on the number of students who could be admitted from a single high school?</p>

<p>Of course the sting of “rejection” is there, but unfortunately, that’s just the world of college admissions today. Unless a school has a clear automatic acceptance policy in place, no one can - regardless of what naviance or school counselor’s etc say - expect to get accepted to any school.</p>

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<p>Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.</p>

<p>JoBenny, I appreciate that no one should expect to get accepted in today’s world of college admission but it certainly is human nature to expect that if others like you were accepted 100% of the time in the past, that you will be too, no matter how false an assumption that is. </p>

<p>I do think colleges could all do a better job of communicating to students both before and after applications are submitted to help kids understand their position. These are teenagers, by definition without a lot of life experience, and many of them do not have parents helping them understand the realities of the process.</p>

<p>Deferment could also just mean that they had better early applicants. Doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t want you.</p>

<p>The deferral process usually mean three things.
1 the early pool of admitted students are generally stronger.
2. From the vantage point of the differed applicants, the school wants to see grades from the senior year too and possibly any other accomplishments that you can bring to the table.
3. From the school vantage point of view they are waiting to see more applications to select the rest of the admitted students.</p>

<p>parent62, only difference here is that U of I explicitly says they will not look at 7th semester grades or take letters of recommendation. They basically say you can do nothing…which means you can do nothing to make yourself more “acceptable”.<br>
Oh well, such is life.</p>

<p>Ok, you are correct wrt UiUC. The comments I made were based on other colleges that normally send final decisions along with the rest of the applicants for general admission pool in April. i stand corrected … I just read their policy.</p>