What to do if Deferred: NEW POLL ADDED!

<p>From which source did you receive this information?</p>

<p>Did Harvard publish anything on that...</p>

<p>To my knowledge, Intel awards aren't announced until mid-May, so they could not be a factor in acceptances announced in early April.</p>

<p>okytdy:</p>

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<p>This is the funniest thing I've read all day. You want "more equality and justice" (not necessarily always compatible) and then you decry communism (not a bad thing in itself but contradictory with the prior statement). </p>

<p>Being on the far left wouldn't be so funny if it wasn't so inconsistent.</p>

<p>I finished all my regular applications in September; everyone's telling me to focus on RD more, but how? I'm done! I'm glad because now I can get to spend more time on trying to reverse this deferral...</p>

<p>No, Intel awards are announced January 12.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.sciserv.org/sts/%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.sciserv.org/sts/&lt;/a>
I'm talking just for the Intel Science Talent Search, though. Maybe you're talking about Intel ISEF. The International SEF is in mid-May, yeah. ISTS is before.</p>

<p>Obviously, if you do become a semi-finalist/finalist, that will be a wonderful thing, but is it a shoo-in? Definitely not.</p>

<p>This is very weird: I wasn't deferred, they just didn't think I applied early action. At least that's what the admissions officer said. I haven't gotten anything in the mail or anything, and they told me not to expect anything because they haven't looked at my case yet. Oh, the agony I've been through, truly. It makes me wonder what the point of it all is. I think I'm going to go somewhere and read Foucault until the pain fades and I can think about working again.</p>

<p>Seriously. Sometimes, you'd expect a place like Harvard NOT to make mistakes with a person's fate, but....they do.</p>

<p>About the percentage of defer-ees who get in, I think the best source is the letter we received, which said "around the same percent as RD," therefore, I'm assuming this means the percentage fluctuates slightly, but I do not think much. RD rate is 11% if I'm correct, therefore I would say the percentage of the deferees that will get in is somewhere between 9%-13%. There is no hard number, I would say around 300 deferees get in.</p>

<p>On the plus side, I'M DONE WITH ALL MY COLLEGE APPS! Yay! I can enjoy my XMas break (go private school non-PCness!) and trip to N. Ireland! Time for a little relaxation!</p>

<p>Now I just have to wait until March-May to find out where I'll be going (and I'll work my deferral). I'm feeling a lot better than I did 6 days ago. I found out I was eligible for a full ride scholarship at Evansville (?) college based on my rank, so no matter how down I feel, I can always think, "hey, I can always go to Evansville." :)</p>

<p>Neither the EA deferred nor the RD admit rate are likely to be quite that high. Perhaps two-thirds of that.</p>

<p>Ok, so I've been going through all the forums and haven't found a single all-encompassing thread on what to do if you get deferred from your EA or ED school. Could everyone give me (and the rest of the CC community) some guidance? Should I e-mail my adcom? Should my guidance counselor call him up? Should I send in more essays or recs? What's the best plan of action?</p>

<p>I was also deferred. There is really no one way to have a great chance at being admitted in the regular round. Obviously, kids do get admitted, and obviously, all of these kids are NOT INTEL STS winners (if it is about 10% out of 3000, that's 300). So, just take hope, and why don't you call the adcom yourself and see if you can ask what you can do to improve it?</p>

<p>I got deferred, and got in RD. I sent in a list of additional stuff I did between november and january, like additional awards in academic competitions, etc.</p>

<p>I honestly believe that if they will only accept 10% of the deferees, chances are they sorta know who they would probably accept in the RD round barring any major academic drops or some other bizarre situation. Just a passing thought; do you guys see the logic?</p>

<p>I agree with xjayz. I think they pretty much know who is going to get in already. I don't see them looking at ALL of those apps again.</p>

<p>Well according to Northstarmom, a veteran of this board, a Harvard graduate and an alumni interviewer, she states:</p>

<p>"They don't know whom they will be taking. Harvard admits students based on creating a well rounded class. Thus, who gets admitted depends on who else has been admitted. Most students who apply to Harvard qualify for admission there. If, though, Harvard needs bassoon players or staunch Republicans or students from Idaho to create a well rounded class, those are the students who'll get the nod even if others have higher stats.</p>

<p>That's also why Harvard has such a long waitlist. Who gets taken off the waitlist depends upon which students accept admission offers."</p>

<p>I don't know, from my chats with the Harvard admissions committee and various officers since my deferral, I've thought otherwise considering the things they have told me (which will not be mentioned for privacy reasons).</p>

<p>You would think that since deferrees expressed exclusive interest in harvard that they would still have a higher chance than RD's</p>

<p>Why is it that the deferrees usually get accepted at lower rates than RD's? I think its either one of two reasons</p>

<p>1) The deferrees' applications get a stamp that says "deferred" (or something less dramatic) which makes the adcom biased against them when they're reviewing the app the second time</p>

<p>2) deferrees are as a whole weaker than RD's</p>

<p>Can anyone tell me which of the two the reason is? Also, I've heard many different numbers, from "4%" to "close to regular percentages" to "more than regular percentages". Does anyone have a credible source that they can cite for actual percentages of deferred that were accepted?</p>

<p>No one has proven that deferees get accepted at lower rates than do RDs. In my area, I have noticed that it seems that only EAs are accepted. We have only usually 2 students accepted each year: One is EA, the other tends to be from the deferred EA group.</p>

<p>Overall, EAs are stronger than are RDs. My guess is that the very weak EAs are the students who get outright rejections.</p>

<p>Anyone is welcome to use a search engine to find what percentage of EA deferred students are admitted, but I have tried, and have found nothing.</p>

<p>One last thing: There is absolutely no indication that Harvard favors students who show a strong interest in Harvard. It's the less competitive colleges such as Tufts and Emory that do this because they want to avoid accepting students that will turn them down to go to places like Harvard.</p>

<p>Not only does Harvard ask alum interviewers not to take interest under consideration when evaluating applicants, but also the overwhelming majority of applicants to Harvard view it as their first choice school. That Harvard has the country's top yield of admitted students is just one example of the proof of that assertion.</p>