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.
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