What To Do When You've Been Deferred, Part I of II

Recently, I received the following email from a colleague who helps families find college scholarships:  “Hi Dominique, I have a student who has been deferred by Purdue, but was told to continue to show interest. Is there anything you suggest this student do or not do?”

The week before, I received this one from a Harvard classmate:

 Hi Dominique, [M]y nephew… applied to Columbia early decision and has been deferred …. [W]ould you suggest that he do anything…to improve his chances of admission?

 The week before that, another from a friend:

[My daughter] just heard back from… Cornell and was deferred. Do you have any tips/suggestions on what she should do next to boost her application when they review it again for regular decision?

 That same week, a Midwestern family (whose daughter had prepped for the SAT with me) wrote:

[Our daughter] was deferred by Dartmouth… Can we arrange to pay for an hour with you and [her] to discuss…how she should supplement her Dartmouth application…?

Deferrals, deferrals, deferrals – and hopes for acceptances in the spring – have sprouted everywhere this past month!  (To be clear, none of these students worked on their college essays under my guidance.)  In this post — Part I of a two-part series — I’ll define and contextualize deferrals.  In Part II, I’ll offer some tips on what to do if you’re a deferred student, including a link to an actual letter of continued interest written by the Dartmouth hopeful.

Waiting for colleges’ decisions this winter can be lonely. Image by Jalil Saeidi on Unsplash.

 What Does It Mean To Be Deferred?

According to ChatGPT, “deferral refers to a situation where an applicant who applied through an early decision (ED) or early action (EA) process is not immediately accepted but is instead moved to the regular decision (RD) pool for further consideration. This means the college has decided to hold off on making a final decision until more information, such as the regular decision applicant pool… [and an applicant’s] final grades,” is available. 

Why Does It Seem Like There Are More Deferred Students Than Ever Before?

It’s natural that families seek to understand why so many colleges are deferring so many students.  Some might blame the skyrocketing number of applications.  Test-optional admissions policies, widely adopted in the wake of COVID, encouraged many students who might not have applied before to certain colleges to do so.  These policies had some laudable consequences.  For example, they boosted the number of African American students enrolling in college.  However, they also led to plunging college admissions rates at highly selective institutions, as more and more students applied for a stagnant number of seats.

But deferrals grow out of when students apply – not if they choose to apply.  To understand the ever-increasing number of deferrals, it’s crucial to appreciate the role of ED and EA in college admissions today.

Applying to a college ED binds a student to commit to that college if accepted.  (Early action is generally a non-binding application submitted around the same time, often in early November.)  As Jeff Selingo describes in Who Gets In and Why, colleges like early decision because it increases their yield, or the percentage of applicants who apply and enroll.  A higher yield connotes greater desirability.  For example, according to College Navigator, the yield of Harvard University, my alma mater, was 84% for the Class of 2027.  The yield of Rutgers University, where I obtained my PhD, was 27%.  A higher yield leads to a higher ranking in the U.S. News and World Report ‘s ranking.  Harvard’s ranked third among all U.S. undergraduate institutions; Rutgers, forty-first.

The Role of Early Decision In being Deferred

As Selingo documents, families’ reliance on these rankings thus incentivize colleges to increase their yield by admitting an ever-larger percentage of their incoming classes through ED.  Those accepted students must attend.  Many elite institutions now admit more than one-half of their freshman classes through early decision.  The trend demonstrated in the graph below has only continued since it appeared in Jeff Selingo’s “Next” newsletter in 2022.  Tulane, for instance, admitted a whopping 68% of its Class of 2029 during the ED round this fall.

Jeff Selingo, “Next,” 2022

 Families – especially wealthy ones eager to find an edge in the admissions process – therefore encourage their students to apply ED.  But if the rate of students applying early outstrips even colleges’ increased incentive to find places for those students during the early round, deferral rates rise.

(Nota bene: My own analysis does not take into account outright rejection during the ED round. Some of the most highly selective institutions, such as Brown and Yale, are moving away from deferring students in favor of outright rejection in December. While this outcome stings more than deferral in the short-term, it also frees students to begin evaluating other options right away.)

Unfortunately, most of those deferred students will not receive acceptance emails during the regular round.  (More rejections equal higher selectivity, another criterion in U.S. News’ rankings.  For context, Harvard’s overall rejection rate is 97%, while that of Rutgers is 63%.)

Should Deferred Students Lose Hope?

Nevertheless, colleges eventually accept 15-20% of deferred students, according to the California Learning Resource Network (www.clrn.org, November 19, 2024).  (The more selective the college, the lower the deferral acceptance rate. That of Ivy League schools hovers around 10%.)  This means that it is worth thinking about how you might use January and early February to improve your odds of acceptance in March.

In my next post — Part II of this two-parent series — I offer some general pointers for what exactly students can and should do if they’ve been deferred and still want to attend that college. However, I’ve got one key caveat.  One size does not fit all.  Specific recommendations based on the student’s interests, goals, and amount of free time require a consultation such as the deferred Dartmouth aspirant had.  (If you’re interested in such a consultation, please feel free to email me here.)