<p>Many people are on CC now awaiting their EA/ED school decisions. Some will be accepted, some will be rejected and some will be deferred. Often, it’s been stated that the “deferral” hurts the ego more than an outright rejection (which gives a firm sense of closure, despite the initial disappointment).</p>
<p>The deferred student is forced to submit his/her suite of other applications and then wait out for all the Regular Decisions like everyone else. </p>
<p>What if the original EA/ED school deferral turns into an “accept”? Can the hurt ego/disappointment over the deferral allow you to push past and, if all things were equal, still allow you to matriculate to the college that deferred you once but now wants you? Won’t you feel like rejected goods and now wanted again on the rebound? </p>
<p>Ego-wise, that’s understandable. But try to understand the theory of false decision making based on SUNK COSTS. Studies have shown that people tend to decide irrationally in the following scenario:</p>
<p>You buy a non-refundable $300 ski trip to CO. Later, you hear of a much better but less expensive trip to UT. Happily you buy the non-refundable $150 ticket. You later discover there is a date overlap and can only go to one trip and will have to miss the other. In studies, most respondents reflexively decide to go to the $300 trip despite the better $150 trip.</p>
<p>The same applies to deferrals. If the school is your 1st choice now and you’re deferred, will you be able to recognize those factors still to be in play if later, it accepts you (all other factors (fin aid, etc.) being equal of course)? Or will you see the emotional distance that you had to put into your EA/ED school will cloud your thinking in April? Will you be able to clearly decide the best school for you without regard to the sunk emotional costs of the schools you’ve applied to?</p>
<p>Or, how do you keep from considering ED II schools? I realize that is a fairly small universe, but once my husband learned of that option, he proposed that as a strategy. If ED is a rejection, then ED II should be considered, but if ED I is a deferral, I would find it impossible to close the door to the first choice.</p>
<p>I realize you are asking something else here, so my reply to your inquiry would be to happily take the RD round acceptance and enroll!</p>
<p>A follow-up comment: if the applicant had also applied to EA schools and had been accepted to some of those EA schools while deferred from ED choice, the EA schools have had months to woo the student, while the student wants to remain emotionally detached from the ED deferral.</p>
<p>Nah…doesn’t make sense. If it did you wouldn’t see students by the thousands, with one or more acceptances in already in hand, adding their names to waitlists which they have little or no chance of ever coming off. Talk about a blow to the ego-we don’t really want you, but if the people we do want turn us down in record numbers we will allow you to be on a list with 1000 other people with the remote chance that we will pull your name out of that huge pool. Waitlist is much worse than a deferral!</p>
<p>I agree - getting accepted after a deferral doesn’t seem too bad, but I would not want to repeat our waitlist experience. First there is the feeling of rejection. Then the uncertainty. You have to commit to another school. After getting accepted off the waitlist, you have to make a decision. We chose the waitlist school. Had to call and send emails to the first school. Missed Admitted Students Day because you were still on the waitlist. Got assigned a dorm ‘off campus’ with everyone there being ‘waitlisters’. Just never could feel a real connection to the school. Wish we hadn’t switched.</p>