You would have to look at the rates of acceptance, deferral and rejection by school. For example I would take a rejection or deferral from Stanford much differently than a rejection or deferral from Harvard. A deferral from Stanford means you are a strong candidate given the limited deferrals granted. Red flags should go up if you are rejected by Harvard in the early round as historically 74%± are deferred and less than 10% rejected. I wish more schools would follow Stanford’s lead here and let students move on rather than provide them false hope unless they truly were on the fence.