<ol>
<li><p>If you approach college admissions having already decided you won’t be admitted to your dream college, I absolutely, 100% guarantee that the outcome will be exactly as you predicted.</p></li>
<li><p>You stand a chance.</p></li>
<li><p>A qualified applicant who would get accepted in the RD round would either get accepted or deferred in the SCEA round. Admissions officers, especially at school’s of Yale’s calibre, aren’t idiots who whimsically accept or reject students depending on the time of year. Yes, the EA round has many highly qualified applicants, but someone who is destined to go in won’t be hurt by the round in which they choose to apply. Getting deferred SCEA and then accepted RD really comes down to the same thing as simply getting accepted EA, and there’s absolutely no chance that someone will be rejected EA if they would have been admitted RD.</p></li>
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