One major benefit of applying to college during the early rounds is receiving an admissions decision ahead of the regular timeline. But what does it mean if you receive a deferral rather than a concrete acceptance or denial?
WHAT DOES DEFERRED MEAN?
For students who take advantage of the early admissions rounds, there are four possible outcomes: acceptance, denial, deferral, or direct-to-waitlist (a rarer option used at a few schools like UNC). Of these, deferral is the least clear-cut. While it may feel disappointing, the great news is that you still have a chance of acceptance at your top-choice school. As a deferred student, your application will be reconsidered in the regular round and you are released from the binding commitment of early decision. Across the more competitive schools, roughly 10% of deferred students are ultimately accepted in the regular decision round. In the most direct terms, a deferral can usually be interpreted as a decision of “maybe.”
Despite this uncertainty, being deferred should not be a state of inaction. Here are five things to know as you evaluate your chances and reassess both your application materials and your application strategy. Above all, a deferral should be a wake-up call to strengthen your application for the next rounds, whether in Early Decision 2 or Regular Decision.
DEFERRED? 5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS YEAR
Deferral Numbers Are Up
Along with record-breaking application numbers at many selective schools, the 2024 cycle saw more students being deferred. Simply put, the overall increase in the number of early applicants to many colleges means more deferrals. For instance, in the ED round for the Class of 2028:
- Bowdoin deferred 15% of their 1,100 ED applicants.
- Brown received 6,244 ED applicants. This was the second largest number of applications in history. They offered admission to 898 with 17% deferred.
- Fordham deferred 5,000 applicants to RD.
- MIT deferred 8,052 students to RD.
- Vanderbilt deferred 800 to RD, an increase of 60% from the previous year, with a final RD round estimate made up of 10% deferred students.
- Williams received a historic high of 1,068 early applications; the previous year they deferred 155 students and admitted only 14 of those.
- At Yale, 20%, or 1,531 students, were deferred to the regular decision pool, with the total number of EA applicants increasing 30% over 5 years.
- After a one-year experiment using direct-to-waitlist instead of deferrals, the University of Virginia (UVA) announced that it will bring back deferrals this year.
These trends make one thing clear: more students will find themselves navigating the tricky middle ground between denial and acceptance.
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The Significance of a Deferral Depends on the School
A deferral will signal different things depending on the school. Colleges with non-binding Early Action programs, such as USC and University of Michigan, admit students very selectively in the early round while deferring most other students. Some like Stanford, Cornell, Duke, and Middlebury defer few students, choosing instead to make definitive decisions on most applications in the early round, so that students can move on if they are ultimately unlikely to be admitted. Meanwhile, others like Harvard defer as many as 80% of early applicants as a default decision, making an ultimate acceptance far less hopeful.
A deferral from an Early Decision school carries more weight than one from an Early Action school. Since Early Decision represents your strongest commitment to a college, a deferral signals that it’s time to reassess your options, evaluate the strength of your application materials, and refine your overall strategy. Our exclusive Deferral/Denial Analysis & Guidance Program is designed to help you take proactive steps, strengthen your application, and improve your chances of admission in the regular round. From crafting compelling update letters to identifying ways to enhance your application, we’re here to guide you every step of the way.
Don’t leave your next move to chance—let’s strategize together!
Reasons for Deferrals
There are a variety of reasons why you might have been deferred in the early round. Possible reasons include:
- Admissions wants to see your grades from the first semester of senior year, which typically represents your most rigorous high school coursework. This is especially true if you are on an upward trajectory after some previous grade weakness.
- Admissions wants to see additional test scores. Many top schools like MIT, Cornell, and Dartmouth have reaffirmed the use of test scores given their correlation with first-year student success.
- Admissions wants to hold off on assessing your application until they have the context of all applications received from your school or region in the regular round.
- You are a legacy or connected family at that school and have been offered a “courtesy deferral” to soften the blow of a denial.
- You have been offered a “courtesy deferral” to encourage future applications from your high school.
- The school is trying to constrain the proportion of students admitted in the ED round to save space for students in the RD round.
- So many students applied ED (such as the 41,000 received by USC in 2024) that the overburdened admissions staff did not have time to consider them all during the few weeks available to review ED materials.
At Top Tier Admissions, our experienced admissions counselors will help you assess the reason for your deferral and your most strategic next steps.
Deferrals Highlight the Importance of Demonstrated Interest
No school wants to be a back-up option or to admit a student who does not plan to attend. Early Action schools are increasingly using deferrals as a strategy for yield management, allowing them to assess a student’s true level of interest. Beyond the standard campus visits, letters of continued interest, and email engagement, several schools this year have introduced innovative mechanisms for gauging a student’s interest such as Northeastern’s encouraged free AI course for all Fall 2025 undergraduate first-year applicants and Drexel’s invitation to apply to their undergraduate research program (STAR Scholars) which requires additional essays and a statement of interest or video.
Consider Leveraging Your Options in ED2
Students have a second chance to leverage the strategic benefits of an early binding round via the many schools such as Tufts, WashU, Emory, and Vanderbilt that offer Early Decision 2. With deadlines similar to those of the regular round, the ED2 round typically offers an advantage above the regular round, although not as significant as the ED1 round.
TTA Top Tip: If you have applied in the Early Action round at a school that also offers ED2, you can contact the admissions office to flip your application to the binding round, if the school is now your first choice. Schools such as the University of Chicago and Providence College proactively “invite” students to do this.
The psychological challenge of applying ED2 after being deferred involves coming to terms with a new first-choice school.
PERSPECTIVE: CATALYST FOR SUCCESS VS. A SETBACK
Your wisest strategy moving forward will depend on the school you have been deferred from, the precise reason for your deferral as best you can judge it, and how much risk you want to take. By being deferred into the RD group, you will be in a much larger and more competitive applicant pool, so your important next steps are to write a strong and convincing deferral letter and to upgrade your application materials to create stronger opportunities for you at other schools. While a deferral can feel like a setback in the moment, it can be a catalyst for ultimate success in the college application process if you take strategic action quickly.
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After attending Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California, Heidi graduated cum laude with an Honors thesis from Dartmouth College as a double major in Classical Archaeology and Comparative Literature. At the University of Pennsylvania, Heidi was a Williams Fellow in the graduate program of Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World. She has conducted archaeological field work in Sardinia, Cyprus, Greece, and Turkey.
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