@Texasmom12 Hi! I was unfortunately deferred early round at MIT.Do you think I have a chance in the regular decision round? I havent done anything special since then…
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I was unfortunately deferred early round at MIT.Do you think I have a chance in the regular decision round?
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You definitely have a chance, just like all the other applicants. But remain realistic about what those chances are, small for everyone.
@nevergiveupp - Hi there! Absolutely! If you were deferred, you were worth having another look against the regular decision group. My son said it is odd, but it seems all of his friends were deferred, then accepted. Like I said, 13% of the class is from that group. About 10% EA get in right away, and another 5% from EA get in with the regular round. It might seem low, but remember, they already took 10%. I am also guessing deferred students tend to have a high rate of actually attending.
That being said, I am sure you will have any options and you can be successful at more than one school.
Good luck and keep us posted!
What you said is not exactly true. Most of these schools have 2 early decision rounds, so if you get rejected from the first choice, you can apply in January early decision to your second choice. After that you are SOL.
Did OP’s son get in?
Edit: Seems like he got into harvard: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19779088/#Comment_19779088
OP here.
DS was admitted to Harvard, UPenn, Dartmouth, Duke.
Waitlisted to eventual rejection at Yale, and Cornell.
Rejected at Princeton, Brown … and MIT.
He is grateful and excited for the opportunities he will have at Harvard after all. But still has the occasional pang of sadness that he won’t be attending the school at the other end of Massachusetts Avenue.
I have advised people for a long time that early to MIT is not an advantage. But I don’t blame them. It is just how it is.
Now that depends on your definition of “advantage”. Applying early to MIT does not increase your chances of acceptance as it does at some other schools. But in my case, I applied early to MIT which was my first choice school, and started applications at a number of other schools. I got in early to MIT and then never completed my applications to anywhere else. I found that to be hugely advantageous. I really enjoyed my Christmas break my senior year. Some of my friends didn’t quite have the same level of enjoyment.
Isn’t the point of ED for your first choice school though? In that case, why does it matter if you are missing out on other schools? You would still be considered RD for all the schools (except your ED school if you are outright rejected). I agree that deferring isn’t the ideal choice but would you rather just get rejected outright when you might have gotten in RD after a few months of waiting?
What you think you are losing just isn’t tangible enough.
@SATurdays, if there were only ONE school that were your favorite, then it might make sense to apply to that ONE school (to the exclusion of all others) during the ED/SCEA round. Such a strategy might allow a student to forego completion of other applications as noted in the post above this one. And if months of waiting were avoided as well, that’s a great bonus as well.
But if there were a number of schools that were equally attractive to the student, and applying to such a school early would markedly improve chances of admission at that school, then it would not make sense (to me, anyway) to waste an ED/SCEA pick on applying to a school where there is no advantage to applying early. MIT says, very unambiguously, that the acceptance rates in the EA round are pretty much the same as in the RD round. On the other hand, some schools practice “yield protection” strategies in which the school accepts a very large portion of the class in the ED round because such students have already promised that, if admitted, they will attend. At such schools, there is a large advantage to being in the ED round because acceptance rates are generally significantly higher.
So, if you are set on ONE school, apply there ED or SCEA. But if there are a range of schools at which you’d be happy, I believe that it makes sense to apply early to one at which being an early applicant confers an advantage–not wasting this opportunity on a school where there is no such advantage.
@Eidetic I see the light now 
Definitely makes sense, will keep in mind as a rising senior
@Eidetic : If your son would prefer to be at MIT, take a year at Harvard and either or both: cross register to take classes and/or transfer. A certain Taiwanese top mathematics student transferred from Harvard to MIT.
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Evan-Chen-transfer-from-Harvard-to-MIT
There was one kid in my school who built a nuclear fission reactor in his basement who DID get into MIT, so idk
So I think we’ve said before that ED benefits the college, not the student, but EA is another story.
A notably higher proportion of those who apply EA are admitted to MIT. But that only becomes clear if you look at the proportion of EA applicants getting offers vs proportion of students who did not apply EA. Essentially, the EA who are not accepted immediately but who are not rejected are reconsidered anew with the regular pool. Ultimately many are accepted. But you can only see that if you subtract those who had applied EA from the Regular admissions and simply compare those from EA who got admitted at either time vs those who simply applied RA.
Using numbers from 2017, 10.5% of EA applicants were eventually accepted (EA + Deferred/RD), while the number was 4.7% for RD only applicant pool. So there is still a slight numerical advantage applying MIT EA, which may be good for students who have MIT as their first choice and don’t want to be bound by ED of another school.
The EA advantage is not slight, IMO. 10.5% vs 4.7% is a big difference. EA applicants are admitted at over 2x the rate for applicants that wait until RD.
I don’t think you can automatically attribute an EA advantage unless you have access to data that shows EA accepted students are somehow less qualified than RD students. I think it is a pretty reasonable assumption that the applicant pool for EA is going to be comprised of some of the strongest candidates for MIT and there will be proportionately more “maybe I win the lottery” candidates in the RD round. Also while MIT does not have slots for athletic recruits like Ivies and selective D3, the coaches are allowed to recruit and give some bump for the student athletes they support. Those candidates will be predominantly in the EA round.
The EA pool at MIT is typically a slightly higher qualified candidates,than the RD pool, so while the percentages seem easier, the competition is very tough for EA. For a student who needs more time to organize an optional maker portfolio, music tape or art portfolio, RD could be the way to go, for best foot forward. Since international students are now open to apply EA, its harder than ever to get into MIT EA. International students are limited to 10% of the freshman class and the best candidates in the world may be applying EA in recent years. Deferred EA candidates applications are read a second time, however the EA applicant cannot add a portfolio later, as I understand it, they can add a short essay to update the Admissions Office about anything new in their records.