Why does Harvard defer so many applicants during the SCEA round? It almost seems that they’re trying to artificially tamper their acceptance rates during the RD round (possibly to seem more selective or prestigious?).
Who knows. It is a good point you make, though.
For real? You think Harvard is gaming the system to “seem” more prestigious? Or maybe more charitably they legitimately need to know more about the deferred applicants (senior fall semester grades and extracurriculars) before they decide. Maybe they are giving MORE people a chance than schools who reject willy-nilly at the EA level.
If everyone got rejected Harvard EA, no one would apply Harvard EA. A deferral is a nice way of saying you’re rejected (in most cases).
Think about it. 6,173 applied, 918 accepted, 4,673 deferred. I think they know damn well that they won’t be looking at a few of those deferred applicants during RD, especially since they’ll be receiving 30,000 more applications for only 600 more spots. Especially with all the increasing competition from Stanford, MIT, etc., it is reasonable to think they’re trying to protect their prestige. So yes, I am for real.
@hhjjlala true
Stanford only accepts 9% early and rejects about 80% of the rest and it doesn’t seem to deter anyone from applying EA.
1 Like
@Multiverse7 also true
That’s because Stanford and Harvard is different. Everyone in the world have Harvard as their dream school to go to. If they were to reject a lot of people instead of deferred. Then Many people dream would vanish
I don’t think they particularly care about keeping students’ dreams alive. They have a set number of spots in the class and many of those people who dreamed about Harvard will get rejected in the end, whether they were deferred or not.
1 Like
@NASA2014 Not sure I follow the logic about the deferrals or buy into the belief that “everyone” considers Harvard as their dream school. I turned down Harvard to go to Stanford and would do it again in a heartbeat.
When you are talking about schools in the top twenty, it’s not the name of the school that is ultimately as important as what you accomplish at the school.
It’s not necessarily the case that deferral = rejection. I know at least one kid who went to Harvard, and several who went to Yale, who were deferred SCEA and accepted RD. Of course, the vast, vast majority of deferred SCEA applicants are ultimately rejected or waitlisted, but that’s true of all RD applicants (other than athletic recruits and movie stars, or the equivalent). Applying to Harvard means that you are overwhelmingly likely to be rejected. The only think you could do to make your chances any worse would be not applying to Harvard.
However, deferring SCEA applicants doesn’t change how Harvard reports its admission rate at all. If Harvard and Stanford get the same number of total applicants and issue the same number of acceptances to fill their respective classes, they will report exactly the same admission rate, even though Stanford rejected 80% of its SCEA applicants without deferring them and Harvard only rejected 30% and deferred 55%, rejecting almost all of them later. That would mean that Harvard probably accepted a slightly lower percentage of RD applicants than Stanford, because more of the people it was accepting RD were deferred SCEA applicants. But Harvard generally doesn’t want to publicize that, and goes to some lengths to make it difficult to figure out.
Also, Harvard will accept a lot more than 600 people in its RD round. Generally, it accepts a bit more than 2,000 people to fill a class of 1,650. If it accepted 940 people EA, it will probably accept around 1,100 people RD. Of the people Harvard accepts, about 400 decide to go elsewhere.
I personally like Stanford’s policy of deferring only 10% ~ 12% of all applicants rather than deferring 80%. When I first found out that Harvard does that, I was thinking “Are you serious?” Most applicants will be rejected TWICE from Harvard! lol
Also, since Harvard defers 80% from SCEA, doesn’t this mean there will be more applicants during Regular Decision round because you have to add those deferred applicants who still want to be considered during RD round PLUS new RD applicants? If so, that’s sort of disingenuous to me to reduce acceptance rate during RD round. In other words, the same group of people (deferred applicants) are being counted TWICE during SCEA round and RD round?
Example:
SCEA round: 1,000 applicants. 100 accepted, 800 deferred and 100 rejected. This means acceptance rate of 10% during SCEA round.
RD round: 9,200 new applicants PLUS 800 old deferred applicants = 10,000 total applicants during RD round. Only 500 accepted which equates to 5% acceptance rate during RD.
Total applicants during SCEA and RD rounds: 1,000 PLUS 10,000 = 11,000. Out of these 100 (SCEA round) PLUS 500 (during RD round) are accepted, which equates to 600 accepted students.
600 divided by 11,000 = 5.45% acceptance rate. Is this how Harvard calculates the acceptance rate? I am not sure so I am asking.
Yeah. Same here
@ibanker38 Is the below how Harvard calculates their acceptance rate? If so (I am not sure), that’s disingenuous way of calculating their acceptance rate because it has an effect of artificially lowering their acceptance rate by increasing number of applicants in the RD round by adding the same group of deferred applicants from SCEA round – in effect, counting the same group of applicants TWICE. Please tell me that Harvard doesn’t do that.
Example:
SCEA round: 1,000 applicants. 100 accepted, 800 deferred and 100 rejected. This means acceptance rate of 10% during SCEA round.
RD round: 9,200 new applicants PLUS 800 old deferred applicants = 10,000 total applicants during RD round. Only 500 accepted which equates to 5% acceptance rate during RD.
Total applicants during SCEA and RD rounds: 1,000 PLUS 10,000 = 11,000. Out of these 100 (SCEA round) PLUS 500 (during RD round) are accepted, which equates to 600 accepted students.
600 divided by 11,000 = 5.45% acceptance rate. Is this how Harvard calculates the acceptance rate? I am not sure so I am asking.
1 Like
@websensation I was thinking of the same question. According to JHS, the answer is no. The high deferral rates have no effect on the overall acceptance rate.
@ibanker38 Actually, what JHS said supports my description, or it’s not as clear as I would like.
“That would mean that Harvard probably accepted a slightly lower percentage of RD applicants than Stanford, because more of the people it was accepting RD were deferred SCEA applicants. But Harvard generally doesn’t want to publicize that, and goes to some lengths to make it difficult to figure out.”
It would be helpful if @JHS could clarify if he is inclined to do so. I am just curious to find out how this college admission game works.
@ibanker38 The poster here says the way I described is how Harvard calculates.
If this indeed is the way Harvard calculates its acceptance rate, it’s sort of a sleight of hand to make it seem their acceptance rate is lower than it really.
@ibanker38 My calculation is the way Harvard and every Ivy college calculates their overall acceptance rate.
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■/2016-ivy-league-admissions-statistics/
The real acceptance rate without counting the deferred applicants from SCEA in the RD round review is around 6.7%, not 5.6%. Therefore, every high-ranked college has an incentive to DEFER many kids in their Early Decision round to artificially lower their overall acceptance rate. If Stanford uses the same tactic of deferring 80% of their REA round applicants, their acceptance rate would be below 4%. lol
Don’t be silly. Harvard doesn’t double-count applications, It tells you how many total applications it received, and how many people it accepted. In @websensation 's example, that would be 600/10,200, or 5.88%. Generally, its SCEA admission rate would be reported as 10%, and its RD rate would be reported as 5.43% (500/9,200, ignoring the deferred SCEA applicants). Really, the RD rate is 5.00% (500/10,000), but Harvard never reports that, and does not report publicly how many people were deferred from SCEA to RD, so no one can calculate that accurately.
The real numbers, by the way, are something like 7,000 SCEA applications, and 33,000 RD, with 800 SCEA acceptances and 1,200 RD acceptances.
If Harvard wanted to lower its admission rate, it would be simple as pie. Over a decade ago, it started offering some applicants deferred acceptance, forcing them to take a gap year between high school and college (if they wanted to go to Harvard rather than wherever else accepted them). Called the Z-List, it is separate from the normal feature of allowing admitted students to defer enrollment for a year. Harvard has continued to maintain that program, and probably to grow it slightly. I don’t know how many students they accept that way every year, but it’s probably in the 50-100 range. Harvard could simply stop doing that and fill its class with 100 fewer admissions, thereby dropping its admission rate a few more basis points. But they would rather accept more kids, not fewer. Stanford doesn’t do anything similar.