Any stats on deferred applicants?

JHS
Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:40:03 +0000

I think that’s one of the best-kept secrets in admissions. Your speculation agrees with what I have observed over the past few years: deferred EA applicants do better than average RD, but not necessarily by a lot. I don’t think anyone is planning to disclose this number, however.

Two things to remember: (1) They’re not kidding when they say the EA pool is very strong. It takes a lot of confidence in yourself and your record to apply to Yale SCEA, and so the deferred EA applications are probably mainly in the top half of the RD pool. (2) But you have forgotten one important category of RD applicants: people who were accepted somewhere else EA (Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Georgetown), but are interested in maybe exploring other options. There aren’t necessarily a lot of those people, but it may be a few hundred, and with only about 1,200 acceptances available RD, a few hundred really strong applicants makes a difference. Back when Harvard had EA, this was probably a more important factor.