My DD’s best friend who has better stats then her got deferred. Her friend would need lots of financial aid and grants to be able to afford the school. Do you think they are deferring the need based students?
@socceryeti Acceptance into the NU In program is one of the decision options. It cannot be changed to Fall Boston admission. There are threads about it here on CC.
@leapyearG Northeastern is not need blind, so yes it is much easier to get accepted at NU if you can afford it. And yes, they do figure your ability to pay into the merit awards they give out too. They are basically deciding if they want you, gauging your level of interest in attending, and then guessing how much you would be willing to pay to go there.
Just wondering–why would NEU defer me? I have a 1530, and 99.4 UW GPA, so it’s not like they’re waiting to see if I improve my test scores and grades (if anything, they’ll go down)…so why not just outright reject me instead of defer?
Ego boost as it may be, receiving scholarship is way more beneficial than being accepted for honors.
@margaret1515 From your other thread you applied to small LAC’s. Do you really want to go to a large mostly pre-professional coop school?
@TomSrOfBoston you’re right, I am more interested in smaller LAC’s, but I did like NEU when I visited, so I applied anyway. I was just curious about why they might defer instead of reject, and I’m thinking that maybe they want a larger RD applicant pool to drive their acceptance rate down?
@Margarette overal acceptance rates wouldn’t be directly impacted by deferral of EA students. It’s the yield that they attempt to protect by hoping that a great number of deferrals withdraw their app, especially highly ranked who got into better schools already.
Rejecting during the EA round would actually drive their acceptance rate down.
Is there anyway to increase your merit scholarship at NEU?
@djnaba The only way to increase it would be if you are an NMF finalist. That is $30,000 max.
Decision: Accepted
Objective:
SAT: n/a
ACT superscore (breakdown): Overall: 33, English: 33, Math: 33, Reading: 33, Science: 34, Writing: 8
SAT II (subject, score): n/a
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0):
Weighted GPA: 99% (out of 100)
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): non-ranking
AP (place score in parentheses): n/a
IB (place score in parentheses): Diploma candidate,
HLs: Lit, Visual Art, Business
SLs: Math, Spanish Ab Initio, Bio
Senior Year Course Load: ^^ +Theory of Knowledge
Number of other EA applicants in your school: around 4
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel, etc.): n/a (I got a bronze reward in the regional portion of the scholastic art and writing but it felt so insignificant that I didn’t put it)
Common Awards (AP Scholar, honor roll, NM things, etc.):
Honor roll, Art excellence award, Jv volleyball coaches award, NHS, won a logo design contest for the Jakarta slo-pitch organization
Subjective:
Extracurriculars:
Animation Club President - 10th
Graphic Design Club President - 10th
TRASH|HSART Club founder and VP - 10th, 11th, 12th
IASAS Culcon art delegate - 9th
School leadership - Lieutenant -11th
Student body president - 12th
Sports: two different schools, thats why some of the continuity doesn’t make sense
Varsity Vollyball - 10th, 12th
JV Volleyball - 9th, 11th
Varsity lacrosse - 11th, 12th
Job/Work Experience: n/a
Volunteer/Community Service: Over 300 hours spent volunteering at orphanages in Indonesia, and other, smaller things in America.
Summer Experience: Studying and making art lol
Writing:
Essays:
Wrote about sitting in traffic every and using my time in self reflection to become more assertive and overall better myself. Man that sounds pretty lame, I promise it was pretty okay. I had one terrible typo in it and I guess they must have forgiven me. To anyone out there who is may be anxious about little errors, don’t worry! Northeastern knows you’re human! (4/10)
Teacher Recommendation #1: Global Perspectives/TOK teacher , no idea what he wrote ?/10
Teacher Recommendation #2: My biology Teacher, but the letter was about the conversations we have after class, not academics probably a 10/10
Counselor Rec: Should be positive, he told me he further described my leadership position (which I didn’t mention in my essay)… (7/10)
Additional Info/Rec: Art teacher, she focused a lot on my service work in Indonesia, which involved teaching art to children.
Interview: n/a
Art Supplement: n/a
Other
Date Submitted App: Nov 1st.
U.S. State/Territory or Country: Texas
School Type: Private
Ethnicity: Asian/White
Hooks (URM, first generation, recruited athelete, development):
Body President?
Reflection
Strengths: Clear passion for art, maintained decent grades +moving countries
Weaknesses: no work experience, overall pretty average
Why you think you were accepted/deferred/rejected: My classes and ECs had alot to do with my major (business and design)
What would you have done differently?: My stupid typos 
Where else did you apply?
Brown (deferred)
Tufts
UT Austin
UCLA
UC Berkeley
The New school
Columbia
Fordham
NYU
Other Factors:n/a
General Comments & Advice: I honestly don’t see much of a difference on paper between me and the rest of us. Please do not get discouraged if you are deferred or denied. We will all eventually find the place we belong. And congrats to all who were accepted!
@TomSrOfBoston…I would appreciate your insight as you seem to have a good handle on what’s happening with EA decisions. I posted my D’s stats earlier, and we are trying to understand better the driver behind her deferral. She has 35 ACT, 1550 SAT, 4.0 unweighted and 4.97 weighted GPA. All AP’s 4’s and 5’s…14 upon graduation. Leadership positions NHS and band and top 2% in very large class. Students ranked above are heavily weighted with Dual Enrollment…often less rigorous, but it impacts class ranking. Natl Merit, Natl AP, Work experience, volunteering, sports early in hs…all while balancing health complications from chronic disease. So what’s missing? Two things potentially? Demonstrated interest and the fact that school isnt need blind? No fin aide…honestly counting on scholarships.
@TomSrOfBoston i have an honors scholarship right now of 15k but i know the maximum is 25k, is there no way to try and increase it?
@FLMomto3 Sent you a PM.
I really don’t understand how I was deferred. 35 ACT, 1530 SAT, 4.0 GPA, president of Young Engineers club for 3 years, etc… so many accepted people had such lower scores. This is so upsetting
@aaaaaahhhhhh Is Northeastern your safety?
What does it matter if a school is a safety? Let’s say I apply to three reach schools and one safety. The whole point of the safety is that the odds are I don’t get into the reach, and I go to my safety–is that such a bad thing?
@FLMomto3 I would say that demonstrated interest and essays are two extremely important factors for EA. Your daughter has very strong stats, but a school like NEU received many many applicantions from people with the same test scores and grades. What sets people apart are these small, but important extra components. Sometimes it can also just be the person that happens to read your app, and if they connect with your character. I would not worry, NEU is only one school, and I am sure she will get in somewhere fantastic.
@vhsdad Like many private colleges Northeastern is trying to build a freshman class made up of students who want to be there and will contribute to the university. They do not want students who are there because they were rejected everywhere else. Those students tend to be the ones who will complain and try and transfer up at every opportunity. And if they fail it will be the fault of their current college.
If you look at the Boston College EA decision thread you will see the same pattern of high stat deferrals.
I’m not saying that Northeastern has to be their first or even second choice. Northeastern has a 97% retention rate and an 87% six year graduation rate. They didn’t achieve those stats by admitting students who will resent the fact that they “ended up” there.
And those stats are not just to look good in USNews. They and other stats are used in part to determine a college’s bond rating with Moody’s.
@RelocatedYankee but your daughter was not rejected. You are very likely to get accepted in the regular decision round so I really wouldn’t take this deferral as a rejection. She will probably also get merit!
Northeastern was over enrolled by 300 students this year! They had a record 30,000 EA apps. Deferring high stat students to regular decision makes a lot of sense so that they can lose some of them that really aren’t interested because they are going to different schools… for the rest they can compare with the RD applicants.
A deferred student who chooses not to go to the regular decision pool doesn’t count as an accepted student. This helps for their admission stats.