This is very true. Neither daughter was premed, but both had majors that overlapped a lot with premed classes. I have heard lots of stories about how challenging the premed classes are, and how strong the other students are, even at what you might call an “average very good” university (such as in the ~100-150 ranking range).
For a premed student, or a student who has a major that overlaps with the required premed classes, the main point of doing exceptionally well in high school is not which university you get into. Rather it is to be very well prepared to do well in the tough premed classes. If you also get merit aid and the parents can therefore afford to save some $$ for medical school then so much the better.
Adding hooked appicants in REA: Class of 2030 had 118 Questbridge admits (up from 66 Class of 2029) just in the REA round (more will come in for RD too, but not sure Yale divulges that number.)
At this point we have not included case western or U of Rochester in our list. Caltech is a great university but its suitability seems to be for a specific kind of student. Thank you for your response.
Thank you, appreciate multiple viewpoints to approach this decision. May I ask if your son got in after being deferred. Wondering if deferred is just a soft rejection?
Thank you for your detailed response, with some great & insightful advice. I agree about $1M is not worth for getting a degree. The intense competition at these schools is also something we need to factor inour decision. Eventually I hope we make a sane & sensible choice. Thanks!
(As noted, UCs and CSUs do not have EA or ED, so REA/SCEA would not affect ability to apply to them, but their regular application deadline of 11/30 is on the early side.)
So just to illustrate, both my S24 and one of his close HS friends applied to Yale SCEA, and both were deferred. In the end, my S24 was rejected, and his friend was accepted and is at Yale now. And generally in their high school’s SCOIR data, I could see that being deferred before being accepted at this sort of college did happen more than just in this case.
So, it definitely is not automatically a soft rejection. On the other hand, it also means you were not an easy acceptance. And Yale these days at least rejects a lot more early than it defers. Some places still defer a lot more than reject, so at those places while it probably isn’t a soft rejection in every case, it may be harder to know whether you actually still have a real chance.
This is leading me to the point you could in fact use this as a sort of tiebreaker when choosing one. Like, apparently for the Class of 2030, Yale only deferred 18%, which is why a Yale deferral actually has some information content. A mixed bag of information, but still something. I don’t think they have recently published statistics, but last we know I think Harvard was deferring like 75-80%. So if that policy hasn’t changed, then you could see applying to Yale versus Harvard as a bit more potentially useful.
All THAT said . . . my S24 being deferred triggered some complex considerations. His possible ED2 school after visits was WashU, and so he had to decide whether to do that or apply RD and hold out for Yale. He decided to take his chances and RD, and fortunately he was in fact admitted to WashU RD, and was able to choose it once he was rejected by Yale.
But point being, because the information you get from deferral even at a college like Yale which doesn’t defer too many is mixed, it can be hard to know what to do with that information.
It could mean that Harvard knows it needs 12 musicians to replace graduating seniors in its orchestra and chamber ensemble– and while a particular musician may or may not be at the level of the player who is graduating, they just want to defer to see who else is in the pool. But Yale- with its renowned graduate program in music, doesn’t need to fill as many seats and therefore is more able to make a “go/no go” decision on its music cohort in real time.
The problem of course is- this “information” does not help anyone make a “strategic” move. Which is why I don’t think kids should waste time on the game-theory elements of applications. Apply to a solid number 1 favorite early; make sure the list contains schools that work (financially, academically, socially) if the number 1 either defers or rejects- and move on.
I remember hearing from a friend at the State Department about the daily exercise “Is Fidel Castro alive or dead?” The “is it helpful if I get deferred from Harvard vs. rejected from Yale” seems much less predictable!
I think a deferral from schools like Yale and Stanford which reject most and defer a few is useful information in terms of gauging how competitive your application is. At the very least, you are competing with less people in the RD round since the REA rejects are no longer in the pool. In the case of Yale, it’s 5,000 probably pretty strong candidates that got culled. Being deferred means you were in the top 29% (11% accepted, 18% deferred) of a very competitive cohort. No guarantee on RD results, but Yale has already put you relatively high up on their depth chart. Of course with holistic admissions, each individual is a separate decision, but at least you are being seriously considered.
Conversely, for a place like Harvard that rejects very few, a rejection might indicate that you are probably shooting too high or there is something amiss with your app, especially if you have high GPA, rigor and test scores.
A reject from Yale/Stanford and a deferral from Harvard are much less informative.