 Hello my people, my name is Meacham, I'm your college counselor, and today we're talking about deferrals. If you've been deferred, then I've got some deferral do's and don'ts for you today that are going to help you maximize your chances of going from deferral to admission. First thing is don't panic. A deferral is not the same thing as a rejection, and it's important to understand why a university might choose to defer you. Sometimes universities get more applications than they anticipated, and that maybe they didn't hire enough help to get through all those applications by the deadline that they themselves put. Another reason that colleges often defer early applicants is because they're looking to build a certain kind of class. College might only admit a handful of people from each state and country so that later on they can see what the whole pool of applicants looks like and they can start to sort of form that class that they want. So if someone you know got admitted but you got deferred, that doesn't mean that you're dead in the water. Still, there are some colleges that pretty much use deferrals like rejection. So how can you be sure that your deferral is not a death sentence? Do some research. And I'm not talking about scrolling through TikTok or, you know, just reading any article on the internet. There's a lot of bad information out there when it comes to deferral rates because a lot of universities don't publish those official numbers. I just took a look at this one article that talked about deferral rates from top universities. This website cited sources for Georgetown, MIT and Harvard. In the case of MIT and Harvard, the majority of the early applicants were deferred to regular decision. But curiously, when I went to that link for Georgetown, it didn't say anything about deferral numbers so I'm not sure where this article is getting their actual information from. So again, don't panic if you read something that doesn't sound so good. Try to figure it out for yourself by looking for legitimate sources that come from publications related to the university or the actual university admissions office. Once you get a deferral, your instinct may be to reach out immediately to the admissions office and that is where my third piece of advice comes in. Don't annoy the admissions office. Basically from like September to December, these people are traveling around the world and around the country, visiting schools, doing university fairs. And so finally, they come back home and all they've got to do is review tens of thousands of applications. They are extremely busy right now. And so the last thing they need is for you to be sending constant emails, asking why did I get deferred? Do you want me to send you an LOCI? Do you want me to give you any other letters? You need to shut up and wait and be patient. I know it's difficult, but it's important for you to understand what these people are dealing with and if you become an annoying applicant, you're going to hurt your chances of getting admitted in the regular decision round. My rule is to limit your communications to exactly one email. And keep it short. That's it. But that doesn't mean you just have to sit there and silence either. Do send more material if the university asks for it or offers you an opportunity to do so. Some universities may ask you specifically for a letter of continued interest and we'll talk about that in a second. Others may ask you for extra letters of recommendation or even just a simple email to figure out what's been going on since you applied. If your deferral does ask you for any of those materials or gives you a way to submit those materials, then you should definitely do that. Take advantage of those opportunities. Make sure that you do it the way that they ask you to. If they say that you can submit things, for example, through their portal, that's where you send them. Don't blow up your admission counselor's email if that's not the way that they want to receive extra material. We don't want to annoy admissions. Another thing we don't want to do is stop demonstrating interest. Demonstrating interest is more than just saying it in a letter of continued interest. Colleges today typically use advanced tools to track applicants' engagement with the university during the admissions process. So if they have webinars or online orientation sessions or even just a virtual tour of the campus, if you go into those things, they may actually know about it when they're reviewing your application. Demonstrating interest will actually give weight to your letter of continued interest and you can actually use that letter to talk about some of those ways that you've been engaging with the university as well. So with all this in mind, the last thing you should do is write a letter of continued interest. Now, a letter of continued interest is going to be a short letter where you express your continued interest in the university. If you applied early decision, let them know from the very beginning of your letter that it is crystal clear that this is still your first choice. Likewise, if you applied early action, but you got deferred, if you're still really interested in the university, let them know. One of the things that universities are looking for when they defer students is to determine whether or not in the future, they will be a guaranteed enrollment. If they admit you, they want you to enroll. So letting them know that that is your intention, as long as it's true, don't lie to your admissions officers. They know each other. They talk. The rest of your letter of continued interest can be used to talk about some of the things that you've been doing since you applied. If you've got some volunteer work, some competitions that you won, or maybe you finished up your grades and you've got really good results that you want to share with the university, all of those things could be things that you can include in your letter of continued interest. At most, your letter of continued interest should be one full page of text and nothing more. They do not have time to read two or three pages. And if you send them an extremely long letter like that, they're not going to read it all. If you want to look at an example of a letter of continued interest, then I have put one in the description of this video and you can check it out. It's one that I wrote just to give you a good example of what might go into a letter of continued interest and how long it should be. Ultimately, the hardest part of deferrals is just being patient, but that is what you need to do right now. Persisting and annoying your admissions counselors is not going to change the result. In fact, it can have the opposite effect. One email, a short letter of continued interest and go back to waiting. Most people who get deferred are going to go to the regular decision round and will be treated the same as everyone else, although you will still have a small boost from the fact that you applied early. And that is something that shows a little bit of extra interest and also can make it easier for you to get financial aid from a college. So by having applied early, you already put yourself in a better position than if you had just waited for the regular decision round. So even though you may have a deferral and it's not the result you want, don't panic, give yourself a pat on the back. You made it to an early application and you haven't been rejected yet. It could be worse. If you've got questions for what to include in your letter of continued interest or you want some advice about your deferral, go ahead and leave it in the comments below. It's good to be back. It's been a nice long break. I was dealing with a lot of application stuff for score students and then I took a little bit of vacation time and now we're back in 2024. First video of the year. We have a lot more stuff to do to help you go through your applications process to wrap up this cycle and start the next one. So if it's your first time here, thanks for stopping by. Subscribe to the channel. I appreciate it. And if you're a returning customer, thank you again for your repeated business. We really appreciate having you here on the channel. Thank you so much. It's been a real treat watching this thing grow this last year and I can't wait for 2024 to give us even more awesome stuff. So I'll see you next time.