<p>You aren’t necessarily the forgotten ones. If 15% of you get in in March, that’s 89 people. I was one of those lucky people last year; I can guarantee that you aren’t forgotten.</p>
<p>Also, I doubt the committee outright voted your application down. If they didn’t have a problem rejected 5,500 people, why didn’t they just reject you too if none of the admissions officers wanted you at Stanford? This is just speculation, but I would guess that your applications did not receive as much enthusiastic support as those of the 748 admittees. The point is that they saw something in you. It’s also possible that they just want to see how you do first semester of senior year. That’s what my mom hypothesized about my deferral last year; I was in 7 APs and two college courses and maybe they just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t collapse under the pressure/die from the workload, although that’s just a hypothesis.</p>
<p>@SwagDaddy</p>
<p>I definitely struggled with that same question - “Is my application just on the brink of good enough and not good enough?” The reality is that you will never know exactly why you were deferred, but you were. When I went to the admit reception for my area in April, my admissions officer was there and it took every fiber of my being to not shake her and ask “BUT WHYYYYY?”</p>
<p>Filling out other applications definitely sucks, but I found that my Stanford essays came in very handy. I think I only wrote one or two new essays for the 12 other schools I applied to… Do everything you can to recycle essays!</p>
<p>Alum here, not an expert but I do interview candidates so I have seen examples of amazing kids who get in and amazing kids who don’t. Honestly, I have yet to interview a candidate who couldn’t handle Stanford academically, and still, most don’t get in. It is a bit of a crapshoot, and you don’t know what combination of things will excite the committee. @Hatebeinsober - it’s not a waitlist, that’s something different, you’ll be re-evaluated in the context of the whole RD applicant pool. But given that about 5% of the full pool will get admitted and 15% of the deferred applicants get admitted, that means the admissions committee believes each deferred applicant has potential to be accepted. I do know someone who was deferred last year and got accepted, and she is now a freshman at Stanford, her dream school, and she’s very very happy. If Stanford is still your dream, you are still in the game.</p>
<p>It seems that it was voted sideways. Approx 80% were voted down and got a rejection.</p>
<p>The accepted 748 this year. In past years it was as high as 750. If you are an optimist, you can say “maybe I was number 749”. </p>
<p>Interestingly, last year the number was a bit lower, I think around 725. So if they had used that same number this year, there would be 23 more people who made the deferral list. The point is that in that scenario none of those people weren’t good enough - there was just a cutoff and there needs to be a cutoff somewhere.</p>
<p>@swagdaddy: Since you were deferred, and Stanford defers very few compared to many Ivy’s, a deferral is a not at all a harbinger of bad results in April. On the contrary, your application obviously is very strong.</p>
<p>^^Never!!! <em>cries in a corner for the rest of the year</em> Ha jk.</p>
<p>^That’s how I felt for the last 24 hours, but now I’ve made a come back! Planning on finishing and submitting my other 10 apps now Good lord the next two weeks will be the most miserable two weeks of my life…</p>
<p>tspro2014, absolutely apply to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.</p>
<p>You’d be shocked at the element of randomness that goes into college admissions. I’ve seen people get rejected by borderline safeties and get into big time reaches. It’s not necessarily common but it does happen. Stanford may not have deemed you worthy of admission. That’s their subjective opinion. Harvard, Yale, and/or Princeton may look at your application and have an entirely more favorable opinion. Definitely give it a go. Nothing to lose but a little time and money.</p>
<p>jumpforthestars, it boils down to perspective. You can attach either a positive or a negative label to any situation.</p>
<p>“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”</p>
<p>-Bill Shakespeare</p>
<p>Obviously, being deferred was not the desired result. However, it’s nowhere near as bad as you think it is. Stanford does not throw out courtesy deferrals. They accept about 10%, defer about 10%, and reject about 80%. The fact that you (and everyone else here) was deferred tells me that you were in strong consideration of being accepted and have a solid shot at getting in moving forward. Keep the faith. Waiting 3.5 months is tough but do your best to stay dedicated to your studies, your hobbies, and general positive habits.</p>
<p>EDIT: Listen to Bulldog. This cat’s the real deal. Really appreciate he’s taking the time to share these insights.</p>
<p>Yeah it’s really not all that bad, definitely still in the game. In the mean time I’ve been going around bragging that I’m part of “the most exclusive group of Stanford early action applicants.”</p>
<p>I have to add, if the dream was alive as an REA applicant with a 10% acceptance rate in what is actually a more competitive pool than RD, how is it ending now?</p>
<p>SwagDaddy, that’s dead on. Not sure why this starmound dude keeps repeating this same one note negativity. It’s a useless mindset. Every deferred applicant has a shot. If you didn’t have one, Stanford wouldn’t have hesitated to reject you, as they did to 80% of the REA pool.</p>
<p>Honestly when I got the deferral letter I was kinda depressed. But after reading the thing through and thinking it over it really isn’t as bad as people are making it out to be. Like people have said, unlike Harvard and MIT, Stanford only defers people who have a real shot at applying (the fact that 15% of deferred kids get in vs 4-6% of RD applicants corroborates this). On the same getting a deferral at least demonstrated that I’m doing SOMETHING right in my application. If I’d been rejected I would probably be freaking out about whether or not my essays, ecs, etc are strong enough for top tier schools. If all us deferred kids are in the top 20% of Stanford’s REA pool then we have a pretty decent shot at other schools (HYP, UCB, etc).</p>
<p>Probably won’t have a clean first semester…at best 1 B, but realistically it’ll probably end up being 2. But i’m taking 6 IB classes and one of those Bs is in HL Math.</p>
<p>^^While you’re at it…you can apply to Starfleet Academy in San Francisco as backup …I understand they also have great CS/engineering programs and inter-planetary relations (especially space frontier exploration)…similar to Stanford’s Bing study-abroad program…</p>
<p>I would just like to say that this was a very helpful and inspiring thread. Thank you. </p>
<p>Although I did not apply to Stanford I am in a similar situation as I was deferred from Duke ED and I would obviously love to go there. But just because odds are against me does not mean that I won’t be one of the few that are accepted after deferral. </p>
<p>This thread also made me realize that they probably just want more information on me. I was beginning to conduct some (awesome in my opinion) research and now realize they just want to be sure I am successful and I would continue it at duke. </p>
<p>I realize it’s not because I’m not good enough but they just want more information. I was deferred - I’m definitely qualified for that. So thank you for posting this thread. I greatly appreciate it.</p>
<p>Ok, so I didn’t apply to Stanford REA but I figured I’d chime in anyways. Got nothing else to do over winter break :p.</p>
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<p>It will be a much longer and much more painful wait if you make it arduous. This is the wait everyone applying RD has to suffer through, so you are in good company regardless. :)</p>
<p>Honestly, I’d suggest doing whatever you enjoy and hanging out with your high school friends. It’s the end of an era, and even if you are ready for it to be over and looking forward (like I was), you are still gonna miss high school and all your old friends, so take advantage of the time you have left. For me, Stanford is on the other side of the country so I don’t get to see my old friends except over break.</p>
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<p>Ok, while I can somewhat sympathize, you should also realize exactly what has happened: You haven’t been waitlisted, you’ve been deferred. For example, they might just want to see how you do in your 1st semester senior year to make sure you aren’t slacking. Stanford doesn’t defer ~80% of early admits like Harvard, they only defer those who they believe have a LEGITIMATE chance of getting in. If you are deferred, it means you have most everything you need to get in, but the admissions committee wants to wait and see until the RD round. You aren’t “plan B” unless you are suggesting that all the RD admits are secondary to the REA admits, which I find rather insulting. Your odds of getting in are still about 3x higher than normal RD students.</p>
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<p>Chin up bud, you aren’t exactly displaying a winning attitude. If Stanford decides they want you in the RD round (and you have better chances then the general RD population), they will accept you, a B on your report card won’t be making their decision for them. Don’t stress over your application any more, its outside of your control. Write some other applications, and then RELAX. Enjoy the end of your senior year. You don’t get to go to high school twice.</p>
<p>I’m sorry that I’ve been missing in action for quite some time now - finals nearly killed me and then I didn’t have anything to procrastinate for and CC in my numero uno tool for procrastination so yeah… ANYWAYS</p>
<p>@starmound</p>
<p>I hope you’ve had a little time to cool off after all of this and let your ego recuperate I know that you weren’t expecting to be deferred (no one was), and it sucks, but you have to recover and move on. I’m thrilled that you want to go to Yale - it’s a fantastic place That other one though, that university in Cambridge, I’d be careful about that one ;)</p>
<p>@friedokra20</p>
<p>I agree that there is a lot of randomness. Think, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale each accept about 2000 people and all have 65%+ yield rates, i.e. there are over 6,000 freshman at these four institutions alone. A lot of my Yale friends didn’t get into Harvard or Stanford or Princeton. Cross-admittance is actually surprisingly rare. That means that there is randomness - it’s not like HYPS are looking for comprehensively different applicants, it’s just that they can’t all take the 6,000 kids that will end up going to one of the schools.</p>
<p>@everyone concerned about their first semester grades</p>
<p>Calm down. You’d be surprised about how little that actually matters. While doing better is…better, it’s not the end-all-be-all. Is the admissions committee going to sit there and be like “AH HA! Deferred applicant #327 got a B in the first semester of AP Lit. PROOF that he can’t handle the workload at Stanford! REJECTED.”? Doubt it… Now I’m not an admissions officer, and I don’t know for sure, but that seems like a highly unlikely scenario to me.</p>
<p>Those are the main points that I saw came up during my absence. If you’d like me to address something else (either new or that was previously brought up), feel free to post or PM me.</p>
Good lord the next two weeks will be the most miserable two weeks of my life…</p>
I know that you weren’t expecting to be deferred (no one was), and it sucks, but you have to recover and move on. I’m thrilled that you want to go to Yale - it’s a fantastic place 
That other one though, that university in Cambridge, I’d be careful about that one ;)</p>