Rather than wait until after graduation, we are taking a trip to Disney in February. I let her choose exactly where she wanted to go, but we’re doing it in February so our exchange student can come with us since she leaves shortly after graduation. I gave her a bunch of options, and oddly enough she chose Disney World. I was really gunning for the beach rental in Puerto Rico. But it’s her big trip and I’m just the wallet and the logistics lol.
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Here’s a question for the group:
D26 has a friend who was deferred from her highly rejective school. They don’t defer a ton of kids (most get rejected) and some get deferred.
If they were deferred and go back into the RD pool, do schools consider the fact they applied ED and therefore has a slight edge compared to the other RD kids?
If they care about yield, it would make sense (since they applied ED, if accepted, theyd be more likely to attend than the other RD kids). Is that how AOs think about ED deferred kids?
Thoughts?
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I do not know the answer to your question on how AOs think about this. I did watch a webinar on early admissions results based on Common App data this year. It seems that someone asked a very similar question about Princeton and whether an early app candidate who was deferred would have a better chance of getting in. The answer seemed to be it depends. They said the stats could be a factor, but I do not know what was meant by that. In addition they mentioned that if something positive happens in the interim, an award, an extra curricular development, etc, that could tip the scales as well. The other thing I remember them saying is that none of these schools know what their RD pool will look like when making these decisions in terms of quality or volume. And, for schools that defer small numbers, it typically means any of those deferred students could be admitted depending on the pool.
On the individual level, my thought is there is no way to know anything that is useful regarding your question because there is no way to know why the student got deferred or who they will be compared with in RD. It is a search for predictive information where what we’d need to know cannot and will not become available to us.
Nevertheless, my guess on deferred student would be that if there are no significant new developments for the deferred student (positive or negative) and it is truly a toss up between them and another student, they’d probably get an edge due to their expressed interest in the school. But, otherwise if there is no new development, and if there was something that made the school pass in ED, then that could be a hurdle still. Of course, at these most selective schools that “something” may actually be nothing that actually matters outside the one moment in time when they discussed that app. Could be completely insignificant when they look at the app again. No way to know.
If it were my kid, I’d focus on the fact that they were deferred at a school that does not keep a lot of students as deferrals as a good sign. I’d say she likely is in no worse position than if she had just applied RD, and may even be in a better position. And I’d leave it at that. The rest is tilting at windmills unknowable.
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We were surprised her bff was deferred. I know it sounds ridiculous given how competitive some of these schools are but we were secretly confident.
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I don’t find it surprising at all that you were surprised despite what you know. I think the facts of highly rejective admissions (even in early, we’re talking maybe 15% or less are admitted, including athletes, legacies and other special interests), are hard to mentally reconcile with our personal knowledge of some of the most amazing students we know. It is hard to imagine that there is a sea of similarly impressive students applying to these schools that an objective third party could easily choose instead. It is like trying to conceptualist a trillion dollars. It is really hard for our human brains to do regardless of the information we have.
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We did a graduation trip for S23, planned it in January for June. We have been talking about D26’s graduation trip but haven’t booked anything. S23 is applying to a zillion engineering internships for next summer, so I’m hesitant to book anything that includes all 4 of us. Fingers crossed we can all go together. Any suggestions for fun destinations are welcome!
Decided to create our own Feb senior trip since D26’s senior class chose Magic Mountain over Disneyland and D26 is NOT going to Magic Mountain.
So the tentative plan right now is that just D26 & I will go. Pick her up from school and drive straight to our friends’ house ~ 5.5-6 hr away on the Wed of ‘senior week’ in early Feb. Go to Disneyland the next day on a Thursday open to close. Spend Thurs night in a hotel (got super cheap rate for a place across the street for $149!) and drive home on Fri.
What’s even better is 1-park-per-day tickets that day are only $104/person.
Woo!
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See if they’ll go to $99/ticket if you promise to visit all the gift shops.
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It’s impossible to know, last year our school had no non-athlete go to an Ivy league, this year there are already multiple students accepted to Ivy and Stanford for CS/engineering majors. is this years class way better than last year ? I have no idea. Only the admission office knows.
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I’m not sure where I heard this (YCBK podcast? Did I read this somewhere?) that Yale loves their REA applicants because they yield at such a high rate despite not being locked in. They say even their deferred applications when they get in RD still yield at a very high rate. Assuming that’s true, I think ED deferred has a level of demonstrated interest that would make them consider the student in a better light than a regular, non-deferred applicant.
So nervous right now! Ithaca posted an update to D26’s portal- I have to wait until I get home so we can check it together. No email was sent so I don’t know if that is good or bad. (Marist did send an email with the deferral while Hofstra sent no email but updated the portal with an acceptance so who knows!!!)
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Mixed news this week from the December responses -but overall they are better than expected!
Accepted into her first target: St Olaf with really great merit – still waiting on need based aid to see if it is affordable -but NPC (using College Board data from her actual CSS) looks promising. I think this will be a great option if the money comes through!
Accepted at University of Rhode Island – with Honors college admission (can’t remember if I posted that one!) Waiting to see if any more funding comes from the STEM scholarship (probably January).
Deferred at Macalester! We expected this to be a rejection - especially with our amount of financial need. So I think this is great. She will write a LOCI.
AND her first rejection – from Tulane. Give Tulane’s ED focus, and our financial need - this was really a lotto type application. She mainly applied because of specific research being conducted there that she is interested in. But hey - if she continues to be interested in that field -she can try again for grad school.
I feel like this was a good week. Hopefully we will know about the need based aid for St Olaf in January.
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The waiting is so hard! Congrats on Hoftstra! Hope that Ithaca comes through!
Thank you! Congrats on your good news too- hope the need based aid comes through!!
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And D26 is in at Ithaca!!! Woo hoo!
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Yeah!!! So awesome!!!
D26 got rejected at SECA at Princeton which was expected but still stung. Got admitted to Clarks Honors College at Uni of Oregon and CSU Northridge so far. Fingers crossed on the rest, all of which are on the West Coast (mainly Cali)
We are planning a graduation trip to Greece.Both D26 and D30 are big Percy Jackson and mythology fans as am I, so it will be fun. At least with these acceptances we know she is going to college! 
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DD has decided not to ED2 anywhere, so we’ll see how everything plays out in RD!
She is applying RD to 14 schools and has two EA apps pending. She has 2 great EA admittances already — Macalester and St. Olaf, both with $$$ — and she feels that she would be fine with any school on her list, so I feel good about it. But she will have a busy next couple of weeks writing a lot more supplemental essays.
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Oh, and I forgot — we’re going on a small boat Mediterranean cruise (mostly Spain and France) for her graduation. A multigenerational group of 9 family members.
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ok, it’s official. I just bought 1-day 1-park-per-day tickets for the 3 of us (me, spouse, D26) to take her to Disneyland for Thurs 2/5! YAY!
$104/person!
Already warned spouse that this means he needs to be ready to be up at 5:00 AM so we can drive from friends’ house to the Toy Story lot in time to be there for when the parking lot opens at 7:00 AM.
…because we’re going to be there for rope drop before the park opens. 
Will pick her up directly from school on her last in-person day the day before, drive straight to southern CA, rides all day on Thurs, drive home Fri or Sat.
Booked a rental car so we don’t have to put extra miles on our aging vehicles.
Snagged a cheap room at the Howard Johnson’s for Thursday night for $149 with a coupon code I got from them via email.
YAY!
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