What To Do If You’ve Been Deferred: A Survival Guide

What To Do If You’ve Been Deferred: A Survival Guide

The fact of the matter is that, even when you apply ED or EA, not everyone will get in. A fraction of students are denied acceptance outright in the early round of admissions, but many more students are deferred to the regular admissions round. Depending on the college or university, 40–90% of students are not admitted early, resulting in either denial or deferral. Some schools do not deny early applicants at all, they either accept or defer only.

If a student’s application is deferred, don’t worry! We’ll cover the next steps: what is a letter of continued interest, do you send one, when do you send it, and how? What do you include in your follow-ups with colleges and save your spot in their admissions pool or on their waitlists and maximize your chances of being admitted?

The Secret To A "Perfect" Common App Essay

The Secret To A "Perfect" Common App Essay

Every year, students repeat misconceptions and bad advice about how to write a personal statement. The internet is awash in videos and articles by amateur experts who just finished their admissions process and are trying to advise anxious students about how to write the “perfect” essay to get into colleges. Students often find their peers compelling, especially when those peers giving advice got into some fantastic colleges themselves. The reality, however, is that there is no secret to the perfect essay.

Really, those students don’t actually know why they got into a particular college—even a highly selective one. Colleges are not in the habit of telling students why they were accepted. Students just find out, “hey, I got in!” (cue excited screaming and IG/snap stories). It may have been the essay, or it may have been their GPA, extracurriculars, or a clutch recommendation. More likely is a combination of all of these.

What Do I Put In Additional Information?

What Do I Put In Additional Information?

The “additional information” box is used differently by so many colleges, it can be tricky to understand what constitutes an appropriate use of these boxes. This section is truly optional. There is no reason to fill out this section if you have nothing relevant to add.

But if you do have something that might be relevant to share, let’s talk about the Additional Information section. There are a lot of tabs, sections, and subsections to the Common App, so we will start by telling you where to find the Additional Information tab and what’s in this section. Then we’ll talk about some things that you might put into the Additional Information, and some things to definitely leave out of this section.

Writing the Common App essay? Read This First!

Writing the Common App essay? Read This First!

Which prompt you pick matters less than the story you choose to tell and how you tell it. When you begin to get ready to write, you should employ a process that begins with understanding the questions being asked. Turn over all your cards. For some people that involves brainstorming, for others it doesn’t. Whether you brainstorm or not, write with no regard for length; just get all the ideas on paper. Then organize the parts of the story that are really important or the parts that came out well, and begin trimming irrelevant content, shortening sentences and fixing verbs, getting rid of unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. At the end of the process, you should have an essay that tells the reader something about you. It should be a story that no one else could tell but you. And hopefully the writing sounds like you—a polished version of you, a you in a suit-and-tie or blouse-and-blazer, but you nonetheless.