Acceptance after being deferred?

[momofkhm]

DD was deferred to regular admission at Northeastern. Then about a month later she got a note from them that they require 2 SAT subject tests from homeschoolers. I asked if she was willing to take them. She said no so I told her what they were looking for is her readiness for college classes and directed her to email them back explaining that she took 12 hours at the local CC and her transcript was on the way. So I have no idea about Northeastern but we've more or less written them off.

 

Now she got a deferral from UNC-CH. The only explanation given was that we did not submit her mid-term grades electronically. She had the CC send them a paper transcript. So I'll be the helicopter mom on Monday and see what's up. There was nothing on the website that we could find that said it needed to be electronic. Since she filled out her application there, we've heard that kids from our county have a really hard time getting into CH. I don't know if it's the number of applicants they get from Wake Co or what.

 

So any stories on admission after being deferred from early action out there? Good, bad, ugly all accepted.

 

She has been accepted at 2 others so it's not like this was where all her hopes and dreams were. But it was her first choice.

[nancy in nj]

We've been following the EA thread over on College Confidential and there are a lot of really qualified kids (including IS) who have been deferred. Here is a link someone posted over there with last year's stats:

 

Here is a link to Q/A from UNC about last year's deferred statistics. UNC Admissions Blog: FAQs for Deferred Students

 

There's more detail but the bottom line is that they deferred about 1800 and about 300 were ultimately admitted so chances are about 17%. They say about half of deferred were IS vs OOS, but don't give any data about relative chances of ultimate admission between the two groups.

 

From reading the post, I don't think your daughter's mid-term grades were a factor in her deferral, they were definitely not required or expected. They are going to be requesting that all the EA Admitted, Deferred and RD applicants self-report mid-term grades using their portal and instructions will be sent in an upcoming e-mail. Did you submit detailed course descriptions with you dd's application? UNC-CH absolutely requires them from homeschoolers even if the transcript looks like every other highschooler with the typical course names & AP's and everything.

 

It does sound like they are going to subject the deferred applications to another review holistic review in March (and I am 100% convinced that they truly do a full holistic review of the complete file), so even though they say they don't want any more information other than the self-reported grades, I would suggest perhaps sending an additional recommendation or an e-mail highlighting anything that in hindsight you feel was not reflected in the original application. Best of luck to your daughter--it certainly does seem like there is still a fair chance of admittance especially for an in-state applicant.

[Candid]

I've mentioned before that contrary to popular opinion, I don't think geography (where you live) can help you, but I do think it can hurt you. Wake has some top notch private schools and probably a couple of very strong public schools stocked with children of professors and high fliers over in Research Triangle Park. There is probably some kind of informal cap on how many kids from Wake or going to get in. I doubt it is set in stone, but it exists. Which means it may be more difficult to get in. There are other counties with similar populations, but Wake probably has some kids of state legislatures, too, want to bet on whether they get in or not?

 

Certainly SAT IIs if they could be submitted prior to the decision time, might be useful.

[Nan in Mass]

momofkhm -

 

My son was deferred to the next application period from one of his early action colleges. They said something about wanting mid-term grades and when my son said he wouldn't have them because they were cc classes, they said maybe he could get a progress report or something. He sent "something" but I guess that was too early in the semester to be considered valid because they called back near the time he was supposed to get an answer and asked for more progress reports. He scrambled around for a few days trying to contact professors and then they called and said they were deferring him to the next period him anyway and not to bother. If I had filled out the mid-term report and sent it electronically, that box would have been checked and perhaps all would have been well? Or perhaps not. My son definately was a bit miffed because he had done exactly what they asked in his interview and STILL he wound up being deferred. On the other hand, he was only deferred, not turned down outright, and he was warned at the interview that he might be deferred if he couldn't get progress reports or something. His "something" (only one was a real progress report) was early in the semester, not half way. And we can all see why the college wanted those later reports or his final grades in those classes. When he applied early action, he had taken six classes at the community college and was in the process of taking three more. In his case, they wanted to see how he did on those three before they accepted him. I think this was mostly because he is because he is a homeschooler and has an ungraded-except-for-cc-classes transcript. He was applying for engineering school with cc grades for pre-calc 1+2 and intro chem 1+2 (and speech and drawing) and was currently taking calc, bio, and calc-based physics. I'm sure they thought that if they could just see those current grades, they would have a much better idea of whether he was likely to survive engineering school. Engineering schools are extremely extremely interested in applicants' physics grades, which makes total sense. The math and science he did with me (for which he had narrative assessments) were atypical and probably not very helpful to them. He had SAT scores but no APs or SAT2s. They had told him not to take SAT2s for their sake. The other colleges he applied to didn't ask for SAT2s either, so he didn't take them. I'm sure they would have strengthened his application. A few weeks before the notification date for the deferred period, he got a letter saying he was accepted. He also heard from another college at the same time, so he has two nice choices now. The others all have March notification dates.

 

Perhaps your student got caught in the same sort of swirl that mine did, or maybe you got unlucky with the timing. They might have been looking at the application after most students' electronic reports were in but before the snail-mail ones were in. Or maybe they just wanted those fall grades before they decided because your student is atypical.

 

Nan

[momofkhm]

Thanks Nan. She did send in a paper transcript from her CC classes. But now they want something e-filed. They'll send her directions in a week.

 

Thanks Nancy for the blog address. I had no idea they had one. The things I learn on this board!

 

Thanks Candid for those wise words. I knew that all those people lived here but didn't for a minutes think about the consequences.

[nancy in nj]

Hi,

 

I just wanted to make sure that you saw this recent response to a comment on the UNC Admissions Blog. It looks about 1/3 of the IS students get in after being deferred. OOS looks impossible!

 

I know you guys can't predict chances, but could you possibly give us a little information on the residency status of admitted students from last year? In other words, were majority of the deferred, then admitted students in-state or out-of-state?

 

Thanks a bunch,

Hopeful Carolina StudentReplyDelete

 

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  YolandaJanuary 28, 2013 at 2:06 PM
  Thanks for your question, Hopeful Carolina Student. Last year, we deferred a total of 788 out-of-state students and 974 in-state students between our Early Action and Regular Decision deadlines. We eventually admitted 61 OOS students and 311 in-state students. Hope this helps and hang in there!
  

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[Candid]

Hi,

 

I just wanted to make sure that you saw this recent response to a comment on the UNC Admissions Blog. It looks about 1/3 of the IS students get in after being deferred. OOS looks impossible!

 

I know you guys can't predict chances, but could you possibly give us a little information on the residency status of admitted students from last year? In other words, were majority of the deferred, then admitted students in-state or out-of-state?

 

Thanks a bunch,

Hopeful Carolina StudentReplyDelete

 

Replies

• 

   

  YolandaJanuary 28, 2013 at 2:06 PM

  Thanks for your question, Hopeful Carolina Student. Last year, we deferred a total of 788 out-of-state students and 974 in-state students between our Early Action and Regular Decision deadlines. We eventually admitted 61 OOS students and 311 in-state students. Hope this helps and hang in there!

 

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As a state school UNC is limited to 15% admissions for out of state students. I'm pretty sure this is governed by state law.

 

Here's an article from the student paper that shows a chart showing acceptances: http://www.dailytarheel.com/index.php/article/2012/04/unc_acceptance_rate_drops Out of state looks to be a bit above 10%.

 

I have heard that alumni out of state children are accepted as in state students but count as part of the out of state cap. So as many as half of out of state admissions may go to alumni children. I do not know if this part is accurate.

 

Duke has the reverse with 15% of its slots allotted to NC residents Tours says in her book about their admissions, that you can be dead an get in to Duke if you are from NC. This is not quite true, but kind of.

[nancy in nj]

Yes, I fully understand the OOS caps at Chapel Hill.. I reside in NC and my daughter has just gone through the UNC admission process. My point in posting the above is that it is critical to know the IS vs. OOS chances for getting in once you are deferred which is the point of the original post. The fact is that of the OOS accepted I believe only half or less actually choose to go to Chapel Hill, a much higher percentage of the IS accepted kids choose to go there. Therefore, even though OOS admission is ridiculously hard, once a OOS is on the "deferred" list, it is theoretically possible that it would be easier for an OOS to turn a deferral into admittance since so many OOS will turn down their acceptances. This is why folks on the UNC admission blog were hounding admissions for the IS/OOS deferral to acceptance statistics--it is the best indicator of how realistic it is to get admitted from the deferred list. It is great to see that an IS applicant also has a fairly good chance of turning a deferral into an acceptance, and hopefully this information will provide some encouragement to the original poster's daughter.