<p>Can there ever truly be an “auto-reject”?</p>
<p>I agree with Princeton’s more modest approach against outright rejecting students. I don’t think students should be disqualified in the Early pool just because they seem unqualified today - they might redeem themselves tomorrow. Admissions are subjective and there are no clear cut-offs… add to this the fact that situations change all the time, and you never know what might suddenly make a student more appealing for the school by the time RD rolls round…
If Princeton prefers to be more cautious with ED rejections, choosing instead to beleive the student may stand a chance (no matter how remote) by the RD round, why not defer them? Deferring a seemingly “unqualified” student in the early round is not, IMHO, giving ‘false hope’ to the student- it is the student’s own responsibility to apply wisely and be realistic.</p>