I personally like Stanford’s policy of deferring only 10% ~ 12% of all applicants rather than deferring 80%. When I first found out that Harvard does that, I was thinking “Are you serious?” Most applicants will be rejected TWICE from Harvard! lol
Also, since Harvard defers 80% from SCEA, doesn’t this mean there will be more applicants during Regular Decision round because you have to add those deferred applicants who still want to be considered during RD round PLUS new RD applicants? If so, that’s sort of disingenuous to me to reduce acceptance rate during RD round. In other words, the same group of people (deferred applicants) are being counted TWICE during SCEA round and RD round?
Example:
SCEA round: 1,000 applicants. 100 accepted, 800 deferred and 100 rejected. This means acceptance rate of 10% during SCEA round.
RD round: 9,200 new applicants PLUS 800 old deferred applicants = 10,000 total applicants during RD round. Only 500 accepted which equates to 5% acceptance rate during RD.
Total applicants during SCEA and RD rounds: 1,000 PLUS 10,000 = 11,000. Out of these 100 (SCEA round) PLUS 500 (during RD round) are accepted, which equates to 600 accepted students.
600 divided by 11,000 = 5.45% acceptance rate. Is this how Harvard calculates the acceptance rate? I am not sure so I am asking.