<p>just curious about the reasoning behind it
first semester grades? just want to wait? why don't they just deny you?</p>
<p>Sometimes colleges don’t know if you’re a good enough fit for them, until they see the students in the regular decision pool. So you’re put on hold just to see if you may or may not be more suitable for the school compared to whatever comes up in the regular decision round.</p>
<p>Colleges have a relatively fixed number of seats. Based on historic yields they choose to select a certain number of applicants early and the rest RD. Students deferred from the early round are qualified but not outstanding, not applicants that the school would accept from any pool of candidates. In the RD round, colleges can compare all of the deferred and RD applicants and determine who they want to round out their fr class.</p>
<p>Some schools do prefer to admit or deny in the early round, S is an example. Others defer a large number of early applicants for later evaluation.</p>
<p>On occasion, they can also have too much of something, so they hold off to see if they can balance out the class. Too many males, too many females, too many of a certain major, too many kids from one HS, too many from a particular region, etc. They take the strongest in each of those categories, and hope the remaining ones are still around when they get to the RD round, if they decide they need them. </p>
<p>It’s known as the fourth bucket - you may be well qualified to go to the school, beautiful essays, great ECs, great recs, but if you aren’t something they need at the moment (i.e. your bucket is full), you’re out of luck.</p>
<p>EA/ED deferral means that you are on the margin – neither an obvious admit or obvious reject.</p>
<p>Some schools defer the overwhelming majority of their EC applicants, reflecting and accepting very few. I have no idea why. You can’t have 80% of your applicants be on the margin. But doing this keeps all options open for the college in RD. Of course, this is extremely frustrating for the students.</p>
<p>A super-selective school may actually have the majority of applicants on the margin. There may be a few special admit categories (developmental, recruited athlete, etc.), a few obvious admits among non-special applicants, and some obvious rejects. But the rest of the early applicant pool may be high quality applicants whose admission depends on institutional need more than individual characteristics, and which of the institutional needs are most in shortage and surplus will only be known after the regular decision applicants are seen.</p>
<p>Same mentality as Friend-zoning.</p>
<p>^^^ Probably the most accurate thing I’ve read on cc</p>
<p>They still think you are a candidate but want to see how you match up to everyone else. You are, in other words, not the strongest candidate they have seen, but still have potential.</p>
<p>
Its not some schools, its most schools. They do it because they understand psychology, especially psychology as it applies to HS students. </p>
<p>You see what lies behind their action in the comments here. Students can tell themselves they’re “on the margin” and believe they “still have a shot”. This is ridiculous, of course. Some schools like Stanford make no bones about rejecting most of those that apply ED. Now you either have to believe there’s something special about the applicant pool to schools like Stanford, or that the other schools just aren’t being honest with applicants. I think it’s the latter. </p>
<p>And keep in mind that even though ED decisions are out the RD apps are not yet due. Colleges care about how selective they look which means they want all the apps they can get, and there’s also the bandwagon effect of kids wanting to go to the schools that are in high demand. These are 2 sources of pressure to not discourage RD applicants. If a kid thinking of applying RD sees her friend is rejected ED with similar or even better stats, she may decide there’s no sense applying. On the other hand if the decision is “defer” then it actually seems to be sending a signal that those stats are competitive. Which way do you think adcoms are going to lean?</p>
<p>Come spring you’ll see another side of this phenomenon. More and more colleges will put kids on a “waitlist” instead of rejecting them. There are some colleges that actually have more people on the “waitlist” than they accept! Defer and waitlist have become tools colleges use to keep their brand popular among applicants, rather than honest communication with kids applying to get in.</p>
<p>^ very logical reasoning! although quite unnerving. thank you</p>
<p>Fitting with the on the margin discussion above, the SCEA numbers Princeton released today show only a 1% rejection rate ([714</a> students, or 18.5 percent, offered early admission in third year of U.?s early action program - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2013/12/714-students-or-18-5-percent-offered-early-admission-in-third-year-of-u-s-early-action-program/]714”>http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2013/12/714-students-or-18-5-percent-offered-early-admission-in-third-year-of-u-s-early-action-program/) ) . That’s the lowest rejection rate I’ve every heard of for a selective college.</p>