Now that is says on your portal that they will be on winter break starting 12/22 is it safe to assume all EA decisions will be posted by then?
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Sadly I have lost all hope of getting a decision by dec 24.
Donât lose hope. I read earlier on this thread a lot of students got decisions last year on the 24th.
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i hope to hear before the 24th and not on it. christmas eve is not the time iâd want my dream school to possibly reject me!!
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Agreed. I really hope they donât plan to give out rejections on the 24th. Doesnât seem too kind. Best of luck to you! 
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my stats are listed in here. click on my name and you should be able to find my posts. thank you.
agreed. thank you. much appreciated. does anyone know if they have released decisions yet today??
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Their online system seems slow today, as least compared to what I have seen others post here. Maybe theyâre just loading a lot into it today (?). Just as a data point, my son noticed his TO button was gone last night around 9:15pm. Logged into Lionpath and his letter was there. The decision didnât update on the portal today until about 30 minutes ago, around 12:20 or 12:30 eastern time. Kept getting the âSorry, we are unable to retrieve your application detailsâŠâ message. Previously I saw that people were getting the portal update early in the morning.
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Hi, new to the conversation so trying to get caught up. Are you only able to login to LionPath if youâre accepted? It seems like people are able to login prior to their portal changing to âacceptedâ. How are people doing that?
Also, when people are saying the TO button is disappearing before acceptance are they talking about the âChange my Test-Optional Answerâ on the left hand menu of the the MyPennState portal?
My son applied EA, OOS and test optional to Smeal and is still waiting - Iâm thinking the fact that heâs still waiting is not the greatest sign. 
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Hi yes ⊠the test option statement on the left side of the portal goes away prior to your acceptance . People ( including us ) have been able to log in to LionPath once this occurs and the admittance date is listed there and the letter .
TO button left Friday afternoon at some point and about 9:00pm EST we logged in and saw the acceptance .
Prior days we were getting an error message when we were trying to log in to Lions Path .
Our portal itself didnât change over with the acceptance verbiage until Saturday morning .
Good luck !
If a student were to get a deferral and their application is pushed to the regular decision pile without even being looked at because they ran out of time I would be extremely unhappy.
My son worked hard to make sure he made all the EA deadlines. BS if the canât keep up their end of the bargin.
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My student submitted early September so there was plenty of time to look at it but Iâm guessing they must have a system as to how they go about the process.
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My kids applied the day it opened (aug 1) and portal finally changed 12/15âŠ.seems to have not mattered. It certainly wasnât FIFO.
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I also wonder how they will differentiate between the truly deferred students and the students who were deferred because they ran out of time. Itâs almost not fair to others that got in 2+2. Because supposedly when you get deferred
They then will take the holistic approach on your application by reading your essays and looking at supplemental pieces. So how is that fair to the ones that didnât get that opportunity? Itâs one thing if your truly deferred because youâre on the line but if itâs because they ran out of time then students that wouldâve probably made 2+2 are getting the leg up and getting holistic approach vs just the gpa and sat numbers.
That being said- we still have no answers over here so Iâm starting to get nervous!
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Thank you!!
How do you know that âthey ran out of timeâ?
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Same question I sent to KParker2024, how do we know that they âran out of timeâ?
Nope, they are not reading essays. When you are deferred they are most likely really waiting to see how the applicant pool shakes out. They arenât necessarily doing a deeper dive on your application. They are just waiting to see if what theyâve seen of your application is competitive with the rest of the applicants in RD.
Why donât they completely remove the option to upload an essay if they donât read them?
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Thanks! So happy for you! It nice to see good news and that acceptances are still rolling out so that is a little bit of a relief:) Congrats!!! Thanks for updating those of us still waiting:)
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