Chances of a defered student

admissionsgeek
Wed, 02 Feb 2011 19:15:27 +0000

yes, but your chances were small beforehand and therefore are still small.

i think you should pull back and think why they would defer you.

a) they wanted to admit you, but because of the restriction of class size (they only want to admit 44% of the class or so) they chose to defer you instead.

b) your grades were ok, but something was missing to your story, and they wanted to see if you would improve grades with a full first semester, or have new accolades that would change the story.

c) you offer something particularly unique (athlete, artist, interested in an underrepresented major) and they want to keep you around just in case the actual applicant pool doesn’t have stronger students with similar talents. think of it as keeping a deep bench.

i have heard of d, but i am not sure how much columbia uses it. d) they know they probably would not admit you, but there was nothing wrong with your application, and in fact you were extraordinarily admissible, but just don’t standout as particularly incredible.

all of the above are good reasons for deferral, and each carries with it various chances for admission, all of them though relatively low in probability statistically. columbia says they admit deferred students at the same rate they admit regular applicants (which means we are talking 5-9%). in the end the saving grace should be that if you are really a strong and interesting candidate the fact that you applied early will be an advantage, there is a sense that you might have more loyalty to columbia as a result.