My DS had similar stats and ECs but was looking to do humanities and film studies. Thought he would have at least been deferred as well. We paid for an hour of a well known college consultant to look over his essays and she made a few suggestions but overall said they were really good. Thought they would have deferred him as well but maybe there were just some other amazing film folks in the mix. Who knows?
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No interview for DS. Rejected. Strong application and essays and stats according to the well known and expensive college consultant who we paid to read over everything for more than an hour, so not just my subjective opinion. Really thought heād at least get deferred, but who knows?
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Sorry to hear that. My DS was also denied. He was expecting it, so heās OK. A little disappointed, sure, but heās been working on RD apps for a while now, knowing this would most likely be the result. Didnāt get an interview, so we thought maybe he would get a deferral as we have heard of that happening to those with no interview. They will be OK. Good things ahead.
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rejected : ( no interview either
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Princeton changed its policy 5 years ago, at the same time as Yale. The admissions director has stated that they defer less than 20% of students who are not accepted and reject just over 80%. Harvard is now an outlier and still defer almost all of the kids (at least from independent schools) and reject very few.
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Most of the kids at our sonās NYC independent school who got in did not have (or I guess need) an interview. The oneās with interviews mostly got deferred (except for 1 that got in). Rejected kids did not get interviews.
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Amazing how Yaleās EA applications are still down quite a bit (10% drop) from recent years. The classes of 2025-2028 have 7700-8000 EA applicants vs. 7100 this year and the EA admit rate was 10.9% this year (similar to last year), but way up from 9.0% two years ago for the class of 2028. Yale admits 10.9 percent of early applicants, similar to last year - Yale Daily News
MY D26 got accepted. She has 1560 SAT, 1520 PSAT, 5 APs all 5, GPA unweighted 4.28/4.0, and two summer research studies. state-level science award, some school leadershipā¦.
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The increase in recent prior years was because of the TO policy. In sessions with Quinlan, he expressed that TO caused a massive increase in uncompetitive applications and going to test flexible would weed out a lot of those. REA apps are still higher than pre-COVID.
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How many were accepted from your school?
It is very disappointing, but keep in mind that the odds of a non-hooked student getting in are a lot worse than the 10 percent that were admitted. Of the 779 admitted, around 30% are recruited athletes, legacies, relatives of donors, and children of faculty and staff. Thatās about 233 students right there. Then there were 118 Questbridge students admitted, for a total of about 350 students. That means only 429 non-hooked and non-Questbridge students were admitted, which means that admit rate for regular students taking their best shot was 6%. And that does not even account for the feeder schools that almost always get students in, so when thatās figured in, you are probably looking at closer to 5%. Keep in mind, too, that the true denial number is not 5,000 students, but 6,100 students because only about 15% of the deferred students will gain acceptance, meaning 1,100, or 85% of them, will ultimately be denied. (Thatās not to take anything away from the hooked or Questbridge students who gained admission. That is the system we have, and if my DS was a star athlete, we would probably try to athlete our way in, or if we were from a household that was extravagantly rich and could donor our way in, we would probably do that, or if we we struggled financially, but had a kid who was academically talented and we could take advantage of Questbridge, we would probably do that too. So no judgement or condescension here). My point is that I believe that the majority of those 6100 students would have done just fine at Yale and would have taken advantage of all that Yale offers, and that some of them are actually more qualified academically and in terms of character than some who got in. And this is the case with pretty much all T20 type schools. So, this is a good thing to keep in mind if you ultimately get in to one of these schools (stay humble) or if you ultimately do not (donāt let it hold you back or determine your future).
The 779 excludes Questbridge.
āBetween early action and QuestBridge, 897 students have been admitted to the class of 2030.ā
Agree with your conclusion though that a lot of highly qualified applicants just come up short because of the numbers game and not because they were less qualified than those admitted.
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Thanks for the clarification. Didnāt realize that. Like you said, I do think the larger point still holds.
5 accepted EA (NYC private school)
Thatās good to know! Where did you get the 15% rate for deferred candidates from? I was deferred and Iām struggling to find any good info on what my chances might be 
Wow, thatās a lot! Many congratulations to all.
I appreciate the reply, it still stings a bit not to have been deferred at least, but I can only hope for better results in the regular round I guess. Good Luck!
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May I ask where did you get the statistic that 15% of SCEA deferred students will gain acceptance during RD?
On the podcast, Mark and Hannah said ādozens", so letās be generous and say ā80-90ā. 18% of SCEA applicants (7140) were deferred this week, so that is 1285 deferrals. So ā15%ā of 1285 would imply ā193ā which is a lot bigger than ādozensā.