I know that your application gets moved to the regular admissions round. But if you weren’t good enough to be accepted in the early round, why would the school consider you for acceptance in the regular round, where admission tends to be slightly more competitive?
Or does a deferral tend to be more of a ‘soft rejection’?
Sorry if this is an ignorant question, but I feel like I’m not completely understanding something here.
I don’t get it either. Accept or deny IMHO. Looking forward to hearing responses to your question.
It’s more like, “we potentially might want to accept you, but we’re waiting to see if there are more qualified people in the regular round. If so, we’ll accept them, if not, the spot is yours.” Common tactic when schools get way more applications than usual, for example.
Sometimes they are leaning towards accepting you, but they want to see your senior 1st semester grades, or they want to see how you match up with the other applicants in the regular round. It’s not always a “soft rejection”
Some googling brought up these facts (as in finance, past performance does not indicate future performance)
Georgia Tech:
UNC Chapel Hill blog, Jan. 2014:
UVM:
Some schools, in the EA round, only accept or defer - moving a high percentage of students to the regular decision round. Some schools will accept, defer or reject. So, it depends on how the schools handles their decisions.
From most schools, a deferral is a polite “no.” Some schools–those that don’t defer many applicants–it’s a genuine “we’ll decide in the regular decision round” and a chance to update them on new accomplishments, etc.
Probably because they compare you to the current applicant pool. They have X spots they can accept in EA and X spots in RD. They usually think you’d have a shot if the RD class is less competitive, so they defer you.
Or they just love torturing 18 year olds by prolonging their wait 
I’d like to ask a follow up question - If you get deferred or waitlisted, is there anything they make you do (or anything you can do) to bump your chances? Or do you just wait?
@psychopathycathy you can send in updates with any major awards/new honors, that would add to your application. You would also send in semester grades, and at some schools you can send a letter of continued interest.
I would say that a deferral from a top 25 or so school is nearly athe same as a rejection. But as you go down the rankings (a different kettle of fish) deferrals can become acceptances. I do know that Northeastern, for example, is deferring a lot of people at the moment that even two years ago would have been accepted ED. They are then accepting a lot of them RD. I know three such students.
I would disagree with @Lindagaf (which I rarely do). Deferrals are fairly common among schools with EA, even the top schools. A number of student in our HS are deferred by some of the top colleges (ex.HYP) and are later accepted in the RD round.
The cynic in me thinks that a deferral is like telling you that they will think about you but first want to see if someone “better” comes along.
For top schools I do think it’s usually a soft denial. Other than MIT (I know plenty of kids who were accepted RD after a deferral in EA), the kids I knew who got into tippy tops after a deferral were minorly-hooked applicants to begin with (think legacies whose parents donate and can call the school and push for their kids).
But with lower ranked, or more “normal” colleges, those that usually take A/B-students, it can often just mean that they want to see senior year grades. Kids I know who were on strong upward trends and did get deferred from these colleges usually did get in during the RD round. Those first semester senior grades made a difference.