She had some updates on a couple of additional awards and a new project and a job that she started in Jan.
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My daughter got a 36 on ACT from a very good private school and her lowest grade was a B+ freshman year. She was deferred. This is a very tough environment and there is not likely one factor that makes the determination. Grades and Scores clear the initial threshold and then they try to determine what the kid can do for Yale. This is tough for most here but we expected it. Now it is time to figure out what is best for our kids. Good luck to all.
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My take on deferrals. You made the top 29% of a very competitive SCEA pool, which is going to be a more competitive pool than RD. At this point roughly 780 (including QB) out of 2200-2300 spots have been taken leaving 1400-1500 spots. In the RD round, you will not be competing with athletes or donor cases (maybe very very few) and probably proportionately less legacies who tend to apply SCEA. If we further back out just the athletes and donor cases from the numerator and denominator, call that about 220, you are at the top 26%. So letās say another 40,000 apply RD, you are competing against roughly 10,000 -12,000 applicants (I am including the other deferreds) for the 1400-1500 spots.
Of course continue to apply to safety and matches and lower reaches, but I donāt think you need to adjust your list or question your application. If you had been deferred from Harvard, which deferred 83%, you would have no clue how competitive you are.
On LOCIās, I donāt think there is any downside. I am of the view even if there is no new news, but a well written expression of āfitā, either or both Yaleās fit for you or your fit to Yale, it gives more color for the AO.
I also donāt think a 34 ACT by itself from any applicant of any background gets the app tossed into the immediate reject pile.
A general observation of some of the high stats rejects. Iād revisit the essays and the LoRās. Also my impression when I see a huge long list of ECās, Iād question if the kid was too ācuratedā and or how deep the involvement was with the ECās. There are only so many hours a week and the bulk of that time involves sleep, school and frictional time. Sometimes less is better.
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My two cents on process for deferrals.
So my understanding is these days, the steps are:
(1) Initial review by senior AO;
(2) Those that pass the initial review go to regional readers;
(3) Regional readers present to regional 5-person admissions committees for committee deliberations and (provisional) decisions;
(4) A final review committee adopts many of the regional committee decisions but also resolves some cases not resolved in those committees, and also triggers an adjustment process for some regional admission committee decisions (hence why I called them provisional above).
I am pretty close to 100% sure a deferral is not going all the way back to Step 1. Doesnāt make any sense to me they would do that.
I am actually not sure they go all the way back to (2) either. Although it is from a different era, that 2016 post implied to me it might really just go back into committee without getting any total fresh reads. I got a similar vibe from the extended discussion in the Yale Admissions Podcast, Episode 28 (Early Admissions). The gist of those discussions is not so much that they feel like they need to reevaluate you, but that they need to see you in the context of the RD pool to decide if you stand out or not in that pool. I have a lot of guesses as to what that might mean in different cases, but the bottom line is that to me that sounds like a committee issue, not a reader issue.
Incidentally, the advice in the podcast about what to do if deferred was basically the same as in 2016. You should make sure to send your midyear grade reports, and then you can (optionally) do one late February/beginning of March update, through the portal. And that is supposed to be new things.
Iāll finish up with one extended passage from the transcript which I hope provides some comfort for Camp Deferred (without it remotely being a guarantee of anything, of course):
MARK: One final note here. I like to explain that in my mind, itās actually harder to be admitted to Yale early than it is to be admitted to Yale through regular decision. And I want to dig inā
HANNAH: Do explain.
MARK: OK. That doesnāt mean that youāre worse off. Itās harder in my mind because it is in our interest to be conservative in that early action round. Right? When weāre in that admissions committee in early action, we have in the back of our minds the fact that we are going to receive tens of thousands of regular decision applicants. And the last thing that we want to do is to find ourselves in February reading these applications from amazing students in regular decision and thinking, doh, I wish we had 25, 50, 100, 200 more spots available.
HANNAH: Yeah.
MARK: And so, if thereās any hesitation, as we said, that committee will say, hey, a defer is cheap. Itās pretty easy. So itās in my mind actually a higher bar to clear early. Because we have to be certain that you would be admitted to Yale no matter what comes through our regular decision round.
HANNAH: Yes.
MARK: So if thereās any reason for hesitation, we will go ahead and defer. And we found that our deferred applicants tend to actually do pretty well in the regular decision round. So thatās another question we get from students whoāve been deferred. They say, hey, what are my chances? And weāve generally found that these students do about as well or even maybe a little bit better just from a pure numbers standpoint in terms of the admissions rate as our regular decision students.
So we do find every single year there are dozens of students who are deferred from early action who are admitted in regular decision. We were cautious the first time around, and then at the end of the day, they really did emerge. We hoped that they would, and they did. And then we go ahead and say, sounds great. Weāre happy to admit you through regular decision.
Now here is the thing. Dozens is not hundreds. I am sure that is not intended to be precise, but still, I donāt think you should expect more than a relatively small percentage of deferrals to turn into acceptances.
But I really do believe you are basically no worse off than as if you were applying to any other similarly selective college RD. You know your odds are long, but if you fit their normal profile you at least have a chanceāincluding at Yale.
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Thanks for sharing this. So what I read so far is that normally 5-10% of deferrals turn into admission during RD at Yale?!
After reading the podcast snippets you shared I am still questioning if a LOCI is a good move or not. Donāt want to annoy Yale but donāt want to miss out on an option of a LOCI.
I think the actionable answer is that one update through the portal focused on new things is not going to hurt you, and could help.
What they seem to want to avoid is people writing emotional love letters to Yale, multiple attempts to express interest, adding stuff that was true at the time of applying but didnāt make the cut for space, and so on.
In that sense perhaps āLetter of Continued Interestā is not an ideal term. But more precisely, one well-considered update submission through the portal seems like a safe choice to me.
Edit: Iām just going to add some transcript quotes on portal updates.
First, this is not specific to deferral cases, but I think it is useful context:
[Hannah]If you feel like you have a significant update to your application, youāre welcome to submit it through our application update form.
[Mark] Exactly. We make it easy to do for exactly that reason. We know that things change. We know that if you put together your application in November or December, by the time March has come around, things are a little bit different. So if something big like that has happened thatās exciting or is just changing what you had on your application, send us an update. That update goes right to your file. We have it immediately available to us in the admissions committee so that we will be as up to date as possible.
[Hannah] Yeah. Now, if you had put on your application I was going to play goalie for the soccer team and now Iām a center fielder, that does not necessarily merit an update to your application, so you know, only if itās really a big change.
OK, then this is from the Early Applications episode to which I was referring before:
MARK: And one final note for students who are deferred, just because I think this is the most common question we get around the end of December and beginning of January is, OK, Iām a deferred applicant, what do I do?
HANNAH: Right.
MARK: And thereās really two action items. The one is required, which is make sure we get your mid-year school report.
HANNAH: Yes.
MARK: So we want to see if you are still enrolled in your senior year of high school. That youāve been continuing to do well in your classes. So make sure we get some record of your first term, semester, trimester, whatever it is. Those first grades that are available, we will want to have those when weāre reviewing your application and regular decision.
The second piece is optional. If you have new information, essentially like breaking news thatās just happened in your life between November 1 when you applied and letās say the middle of February or beginning of March, you can put together one nice, concise application update. Use your portal to send it together just to give us the latest and greatest. You donāt need to go back into your drawers and essentially say, what are the things I didnāt include in the application from five years ago that I should have put in there? Iāll just start throwing things at the wall now.
HANNAH: Right. Do not do that.
MARK: But we know that your life continues to move along. So if thereās new awards or accomplishments or a project has taken on a new dimension since you put that application together in the fall, you can let us know about it.
OK, so to me that is admirably straightforward. And personally, I plan to advise S24 to just do that one update.
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Thanks again!
For deferred students, would it be more likely that there was something wrong/missing in the LORs or that it was up to chance/random at a certain point? Just wondering if I need to reevaluate my recs for RD
It has been several years since my son applied, but some schools (many?) had a standard template and due date (mid-Feb maybe?) for the LOCI so that it was not so much a letter but instead a one or two paragraph update. Both RD schools and SCEA deferral offered this opportunity.
IIRC, my son mentioned awards he received subsequent to filing his app, and included an abstract he presented at a science fair. I cannot recall if Yale followed the same format as the other schools, but I trust that they will communicate with applicants after the new year.
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I think deferred students very likely do not have a harmful recommendation.
That said, I donāt think it is wrong to ask yourself if they are as helpful as they could be. But the answer is probably that they are, if you did the normal things to get them.
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Thank you, that reassures me. Officially over it 
now Iām looking forward to regular decision apps!
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My D23 was deferred last year and submitted one page LOCI in early February, listing all her updates that happened since the fall SCEA application deadline. It was certainly humbling for her, but also gave her an opportunity to reflect, explore more options and pivot to picturing herself at other schools that āloved her backā.
She was accepted to Yale RD and is a freshman there now. Be positive! Good luck to all!
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Yale is not the only school in the US. Instead of asking a bunch or random strangers, what does she think?
hey! what do you mean by āone page lOCI.ā Did your daughter email it to the AO? or did she send the update through the portal? Iām currently debating between updating through portal and LOCI through email
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I think it was submitted through the portal.
Did she make it in list form or in paragraph form and was it strictly about extracurriculars or academics?
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Iād keep in mind you have quite a while before you actually need to submit anything. So even if an āupdateā seems like a stretch now, who knows by late February/beginning of March.
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Personally, I donāt think you need much excuse for a single āupdateā letter as a deferred applicant. Even if it is just more of the same in some senseāmore challenging yourself in advanced courses and getting top grades; an award won before; more team or individual competitive successes; and so onāthat still counts as ānewā information. Including because not all seniors keep up such things.
That said, frankly, I agree none of this is actually likely to move the needle, and that is fine. I think in most cases, this is just a matter of making sure the applicant feels like they have submitted their best possible application. And to me, at least, that means conforming to Yaleās advice to the extent possible.
But having seen what they say about this process: very likely all this is out of the applicantsā hands at this point anyway. Again, I think in most of these deferral cases, their admissions committee feels like they know the applicant well, they can see why they would be a good addition to Yale, but they canāt admit everyone like that. So it will just be a matter of what final selection of admits that that admissions committee makes once they can see the RD pool. Meaning the main variable at this point is exactly who else ends up applying, and you simply cannot control that.
So I really do not see this as a high stakes thing. Again, I am sure if you stick to their advice it wonāt hurt to do that one update through the portal. But I wouldnāt worry too much about missing some great opportunity if you donāt figure out the secret formula to optimizing that update. Because I donāt think it exists.
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