<p>I haven't seen anyone post this yet, so I apologize if this topic has already been discussed. If it has not, some of you may find this article interesting. Three deans of admission (Yale, Lawrence, Pomona) answered questions in the New York Times from students and teachers.</p>
<p>While the entire article is quite interesting, I found one section intriguing, in particular:</p>
<p>To Mr. Brenzel of Yale: What is the purpose of deferring 2,644 students in this years round of applications? You say that the deferred student will be reevaluated in the regular application process, but seeing as your freshmen class this year had 1,892 students, there is no possible way that most of these applicants stand a chance of being accepted in addition to the 742 accepted early and the regular applicant pool yet to come. Why do you prolong the misery?</p>
<p>Mr. Brenzel of Yale: This question makes two false assumptions: that being deferred is a misery and that deferred candidates have relatively poor chances of admission. Though odds of admission to Yale are always long, each year we accept about the same percentage of the students deferred from the early round as we accept of the regular decision applicants. We are often looking to see how applicants perform in the first half of senior year, when many students are taking their most challenging schedules or seeing their primary activities outside the classroom bear fruit. At the same time, we do try very hard to give final decisions to as many students as possible, where we feel certain that we will simply not be able to offer admission in the spring. This year we let over 2,100 students know that we were closing our consideration of their applications, about 38% of our early candidates. Virtually all of these applicants were very strong students, who are going to attend great colleges and have great success. We only chose not to defer them so that they could focus wholeheartedly on their other applications.</p>
<p>I know at least 1 deferred applicant where Mr. Brenzel's explanation is not credible: gap year applicant; no chance of any change from now until march with respect to grades or extracurricular activities.</p>
<p>I think Mr. Brenzel may answer KRM's objection by stating that this is often the case. While seeing first semester grades or other accomplishments may be helpful in most cases, it is likely possible that the admissions office would like to evaluate borderline applicants with the rest of the field in mind. </p>
<p>Perhaps the school only wishes to take x gap year students, and they were unable to admit at this time without seeing the rest of the gap year student pool. Who knows. </p>
<p>However, I think it seems pretty probable that deferred applicants do not receive this status as a result of malice or the admissions office's love of miserable kids.</p>
<p>If the acceptance rate for deferrals is equal to the normal acceptance rate, they need to reject more, given that there are boatloads of totally unqualified RD applicants.</p>
<p>^ while it's true that there are many unqualified RD applicants, there are also many qualified ones; so it'll be tough to choose between the qualified RD applicants and all the deferred EA applicants (myself included in deferral group)</p>
<p>^ But I'm saying that the deferred applicants have already gone through a decisions round, so the unqualified ones should have been rejected early.</p>
<p>If you have qualified AND unqualified normal, then the same acceptance rate implies both qualified and unqualified deferrees (in comparison with the RD pool).</p>
<p>You're forgetting the RD kids that are overqualified or w/e you want to call it...those that would've gotten in SCEA. So I guess the 2000 "great", but not "extraordinary," deferred students have about the same odds as the 5000 "extraordinary," "great," "decent," and "bad" RD applicants. Sounds fine.</p>
<p>Really interesting article!! Thanks for posting!</p>
<p>I thought this was interesting..</p>
<p>Mr. Brenzel of Yale: Weaker transcripts face tough sledding in a highly selective college environment. They don’t automatically disqualify a candidate for us, but you have to remember that we have many thousands of applicants with extremely strong transcripts who are also just as exemplary in the other ways that count.</p>
<p>Sorry, I guess that doesnt have anything to do with the OP's original topic but..just pointing it out :)</p>
<p>^^cc, then Yale should account for that in the number of students deferred, and thus defer fewer students. Plus, I think that there are far more auto-rejects than auto-admits, so it doesn't balance out entirely.</p>
<p>Basically, I really don't think that all of the deferrees have a legitimate chance of admission RD, and thus should be given a final answer early.</p>
<p>Oh wow, that doesn't seem fair that they only choose the same percentage of people from the deferred pool as from the RD pool. All the obvious rejects from the early pool have been sorted out already (even more so this year), so how come the deferrees get the same percentage acceptance as the RD pool which has everyone from extraordinary to plain terrible?
:/</p>
<p>Besides, if we say there will be a 6% RD admit rate this year, and they were to accept the same percentage from the deferred pool, it'd only be 2,644x0.06=approximately 159 students. 159 students! >:(</p>
<p>That seems sort of unfair seeing how the deferred pool is at default more "qualified" in that all the obvious rejects have been sorted out. It seems like us deferrees even have a worse chance than the RD people because we'll be competing against other qualified deferred people.</p>
<p>I don't pretend to understand the process, but assume each regional admissions officer has a growing stack of RD application they haven't read yet, some of which were received before Nov 1, and many more hitting the mailbox between Nov 1 and Dec 1 when deliberations on EASC supposedly started. If the admissions officer has a couple of really strong candidates in the EA pile, but hasn't had a chance to go through the RDs, or scanned a few and realized that there are others possibly as strong in the waiting pile, what should he do? Defer, of course. The EA applicant will still have the bump of having indicated Yale first choice, which should break a tie with an RD applicant.</p>
<p>Here is my favorite quote from the article (from Mr. Brenzel of Yale):</p>
<p>"With respect to programs of study, we are less concerned with particular course designations and more concerned simply to see that candidates have embraced and performed well in whatever their schools offer as a most challenging program. At the same time, we are not particularly drawn to one-dimensional students who have made their sole or primary objective in life amassing the largest number of honors or AP courses conceivable, accompanied by multiple efforts to achieve the worlds highest test scores."</p>
<p>Are the deferrees counted in the RD # apps? If so, it's not hard to see why Yale defers so many, at least in part--so that it can lower its SCEA acceptance rate and then lower its RD acceptance rate, for an overall lower acceptance rate.</p>