Early decision deferrals remain loyal to Penn

This past December, Howard Ko — a senior at Collingwood School in West Vancouver, Canada — became one of more than 880 students whose admissions statuses to Penn were put on hold.

For the Class of 2016, the Admissions Office sent out 886 deferral notifications to hopeful applicants, informing them that they would have to wait until the end of March to hear from Penn.

In the uncertain few months that lie ahead, these applicants will have to look into other schools and may put Penn out of active consideration, according to Top Colleges Educational Consultant Steven Goodman.

“There are some who say, ‘If the school didn’t love me for who I am, I’m going to take my marbles, go home and look at other schools,’” said Goodman, a 1989 Graduate School of Education graduate.

However, Dean of Admissions Eric Furda said students who move on from Penn after getting deferred are in the minority.

For the Class of 2015, the Admissions Office deferred 1,100 students and ultimately accepted 119, Furda said. Of the 119, 106 matriculated to Penn for the fall semester.

The acceptance rate in the regular decision round for students who had been deferred early decision was 10.8 percent, while the overall regular decision acceptance rate was 9.5 percent.

“There is a big part of this where students are going to move on,” Furda said. “In most cases, it’s probably healthy given the low admittance rate, but if we look at the 89-percent yield, we can see that for the most part, students are still staying committed to Penn.”

Furda explained that a deferral in the early round may be very purposeful, and the Admissions Office may want to see how an applicant performs in the context of the regular decision pool.

Maria Morales-Kent — director of college counseling at The Thacher School in Ojai, Calif. — said the connection to Penn that drives most students to apply early decision is stronger than a deferral letter.

“I believe that for most kids, the connection to the school through the early process is an emotional connection,” she said. “In my experience, it’s a small percentage that will fall out of love.”

Ko said getting deferred from the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business “weirdly” gave him hope for the future. He was neither surprised nor disappointed by the news, as he was aware of the competitiveness of the program.

“The deferral is still a statement that I’m in the ballpark for one of the most prestigious programs and that I have a good chance at any of the other universities out there,” he said.

Ko is using the next few weeks to show the Admissions Office his enthusiasm for high-school activities like Model United Nations by organizing a conference for students in Canada. He said he wants to update Penn with “something more unique” than just grades, and at the same time, use the extra time to explore his personal interests.

However, Furda said that once they are deferred, students retain relatively little control over their final admissions decision — even if they do send in supplementary materials.

Wharton freshman Micah Sandusky, who was initially deferred from Penn, didn’t take the deferral personally.

“I was a little disappointed, but when you look at the statistics of acceptance, you can’t assume that you’ll get in,” he said. “I felt that it wasn’t anything personal from Penn. I just know that they can only accept so many people early.”

Sandusky applied to seven other colleges in the interim and began “planning for the eventuality of a rejection.” Even after he received news of acceptance from Penn, he said he still weighed other schools into his decision.

However, for Peyton Weidenbacher, a freshman at the University of Chicago, getting deferred from Penn last year caused him to lose interest in the school.

He said this was partly due to the fact that he chose Penn for early decision and, by being bumped into the regular round, he felt as if the exclusivity of his decision had been waived.

“I felt like I had given them my opportunity and having them defer me, they basically threw it away,” he said.

Despite its ongoing outreach efforts to likely letter recipients and those admitted in the early and regular rounds, Furda said the University does not have any active campaigns to reach out to deferred students.

“That’s a delicate balance because we don’t want to be encouraging given the overall acceptance rate of any student at that point, so there isn’t anything we do,” he said.

This story has been updated to reflect that 106 of the students who were deferred then accepted for the Class of 2015 matriculated for the fall semester, not 108.

Comments (7)

So the bottom line is that 53% of the Class of 2015 was filled from the 4,571 in the early pool (with a 28.7% admit rate), and 47% of the class was filled from the 27,088 (with a 9.6% admit rate!

further, the yield rate on early pool applicants who were admitted exceeded 95%, while the yield rate on regular applicants (who were not bound to accept and presumably had other options) was less than 45%!

It is easy to see why Penn relies so heavily on the early pool to fill the class and raise the yield rate. Anybody applying early has a three times greater chance of getting in than the poor kids who apply “regular”.

Couldn’t agree more, Alum. And if you do that same math going back a few years, you see that yield of true regular decision applicants has consistently fallen in Furda’s tenure. Who cares how many applications a school receives? With the common app it is all too easy for students to apply. The true test of a school’s popularity is its yield rate.

“And if you do that same math going back a few years, you see that yield of true regular decision applicants has consistently fallen in Furda’s tenure.”

Joe, that’s incorrect. Since Penn’s RD yield took a small hit the year that Harvard and Princeton dropped their early admissions programs a few years ago (for obvious reasons), it’s remained fairly constant. And it may actually go up this year with the restoration of early admissions programs at those 2 schools. We’ll see in 3 months.

Alum, your comment kind of glazes over a few important details…

Legacies, recruited athletes, children of donors, etc. are all lumped into that ED pool. Penn does not consider legacy as a part of your application if you do not do ED. All recruited athletes are in the ED pool, and are applying with essentially guaranteed admission. Saying that you are three times more likely to get in ED is pretty misleading. For a normal kid without any of these classifications, are your chances of getting in ED easier? Of course- that’s how it is everywhere. Are you three times more likely to get in than if you do RD? No way. I don’t have all of the numbers, and I’m sure they’d be pretty difficult to find (because Penn loves ED and doesn’t want to release numbers that make its stats less impressive), but I’d be curious to see what the ED data would look like if you ignore recruited athletes and legacies (i.e. an applicant with a more similar package to an RD candidate).

Just to clarify my stance, let me say that I was accepted ED last year, without any special circumstances (not a legacy, recruited athlete, daddy didn’t donate millions, etc.) Do I think that I had an easier chance getting in because I did ED? Of course. Look- everybody who gets in deserves to be here, but not everybody who is denied doesn’t deserve to be here. There are candidates who are just as good as another, but Penn can’t take everybody. By applying ED, you simply reduce your chances of being thrown out by the numbers game. In RD, there is a higher percentage of worthy candidates who do not gain acceptance due simply to bad luck.

Why should we disregard the legacies in the early pool? Going farther than any other school I know of, Penn openly bribes them to apply early by letting them know that otherwise their admissions edge will disappear.

So for an alum to get the mysterious and undefined admissions edge, he or she must agree in advance: if you get in, you MUST matriculate at Penn – no choice about it. Alums who apply early are probably AT LEAST three times as likely to be admitted as alums in the early pool.

By the way, not all athletic recruits apply early – some of them are still being recruited as we speak. They will, however, get a “likely” letter if they agree to enroll.

It would be interesting to know how many of these “likely letters” – tantamount to admission – are issued prior to April 1. When you add “likely” recipients to admits from the early pool, the fraction of the class actually filled by people who applied “regular” and expect to learn their fate on April 1 declines further.

The yield rate on the “likelies” is probably quite high, including not only athletes but others with whom Penn seeks a recruiting edge with this device.

Recruited athletes are almost all In the ED pool. Only the leftover athletes are still being “recruited”, just to fill vacant spots. Likely letters mainly go out in the early fall, well before the ED deadline. And it is a very valid point that you can’t judge the yield of ED vs regular because the numbers are skewed by all the recruits who have essentially been guaranteed admission, except for any extenuating adverse circumstances.

“Furda said more than 400 likely letters were sent out for the Class of 2015 in March 2011.” – Jan. 25 article in the DP.

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