If you were recently on the receiving end of a deferral decision from MIT, you are definitely permitted a sense of disappointment. MIT is an outstanding school, and your application was likely up to their academic standards. Being a strong academic fit for MIT, though, isn’t everything you need to get in. In this post, we’ll break down where the weak points may have been in your application, how you can address them, and what else you need to do to get into a dream school. First, though, let’s dig into the MIT deferral data to get a sense of what happened and where you stand as a result.
MIT received nearly 30,000 applications and accepted only 4.6% of applicants, or 1,334 for the Class of 2029. The Early Action acceptance rate was less than 2% higher than the overall acceptance rate, a much lower boosted rate of admission that students frequently assume applying early offers. Thanks to MIT being extremely data happy, and willing to share, we also know that most Early Action applicants are deferred. For the Class of 2029, the percentage of EA applicants who were deferred was 62%.
Eventually, 175 deferred students were admitted, or only 2.3%. This is comparable to the Regular Action admit rate, which was only 0.1% higher.
So, what does this tell us? First, you can get in after a deferral — but it is as hard as applying fresh as a Regular Action applicant. Being deferred does not mean that MIT is letting you down easy, but it also doesn’t suggest that they are any more interested in your candidacy than Regular Action applicants.
MIT has been open about their sky-high deferral rate for years, but that doesn’t make it sting any less. To become one of the small percentage of deferred students who get into MIT eventually, there are steps you need to take (and not take). Before you can do that responsibly, though, there is other work to get done. Below, we’ll break down each step you need to take from the moment of deferral to increase your odds of getting into MIT and to ensure that you college application experience is a success.
Getting into college can be tough, but a deferral isn’t the end of your race. We craft acceptance earning students for students who have faced early disappointments. Get yours.
After you have been deferred, MIT will automatically re-consider your application in the Regular Action cycle. They will not look at it before the January 4th Regular Action deadline, so there is nothing that you need to, nor should, do immediately. Instead, you first need to focus on the other schools you will be applying to this year.
Review Your College List
If you applied to other schools Early Action, you may have some acceptances in your pocket. If so, that is awesome. It offers you a level of security that students facing the regular cycle without any acceptances don’t have. It also means you probably don’t need to change much about your college list. After all, while you aren’t into MIT yet, you do have somewhere to head in the fall if you need it.
If you do not have any EA admits, you are in a more precarious position. You have one more go at admissions, and your chances of getting into MIT, as we broke down earlier, are low. So, you need a college list with a solid balance of reaches, targets, and safety, or foundation, schools.
A longer college list is not a better college list, and adding more unlikely schools does not increase your chances of getting into any of them. We often hear from students that they don’t need safeties because they are applying to so many reaches and targets that they are bound to get into a few. That is terrible math. Balance is absolutely crucial, and we limit our students to 10 schools, excluding automatic admissions or in-state options. This isn’t because we are brutal or dream crushers, quite the opposite. Ten schools, invested in with focus and clarity of direction, is really all you need.
Reassess Your Essay
Since MIT defers most EA applicants, being deferred doesn’t tell you much about your application. If you didn’t have the grades and scores, though, you would have just been rejected. The problem was, then, in how you told your story. Now, as MIT is not on the Common App there may not be strong direction crossover between the writing you did for MIT and what you have done for your Regular Decision schools. However, there are important red flags to look out for in any of your writing.
Strong college application writing, including the main personal statement, needs to highlight self-awareness, humility, and, ideally, collaboration. This can look different based on what your interests are. You also need to be likeable. We frequently see applications, after an MIT deferral or rejection, that were so focused on being impressive that they became, to be blunt, insufferable. Yes, your awards are impressive, and your leadership is clearly strong, but if you spend all your application focused on that you lose one of the most important things there is to communicate: your humanity.
So, before you submit any most applications, give our 2026-2027 essay guide a read. You don’t need to beat yourself up to improve your applications, just be open to where you might have opportunities to improve.
Press Submit
Your applications are done, RD deadlines are approaching, and it’s time to press submit. Yes, it may seem counter-intuitive as MIT is still your first choice, but before you do anything else for MIT you need to press submit on all of your other applications.
Once your RD applications are in, you can turn your attention back to MIT.
What MIT Wants
MIT is very transparent about what they want and what they definitely do not want. First, do not reach out to MIT looking for an explanation for their deferral decision. They are blunt about this:
“…if you call or email us, we won’t tell you why you were deferred because honestly, we can’t. We make decisions as a group in committees, so no single person in our office will know why an individual applicant was deferred. We know that the ambiguity is difficult and frustrating, but if you were deferred it means that you were and still are considered a competitive applicant.” (their emphasis)
Not only should you definitely not call or email, but MIT does not permit deferred applicants to “…rewrite your essays, redo your interview, replace your letters of recommendation with new ones, or redo your application.”
What MIT does allow is one update, the FUN. Seriously, they call it that. FUN stands for February Updates & Notes, and it is a single form that you can fill out once that they will email you when it is available. Unsurprisingly, that happens in February.
The form invites you to share your midyear grades and updates to your application, specifically focused on academics, awards, activities, work, or a change in “circumstances” that you feel they need to know. Now, these updates aren’t required. If you have nothing to say, you don’t have to say anything. However, if you want to get into MIT, you need to have updates.
Each year, we help students tell their story to MIT after a deferral. Sometimes, they know what they want to say but aren’t sure how to say it. Often, though, they don’t think they have anything to say. Universally, they are wrong — they just need some assistance in telling their story. That’s where we help.
If you want to draft an update before the form is released, start with one important piece of information: the word limit is 250 words. In that limit, you need to focus not on what MIT offers, but on what you can offer to MIT. This is, then, not like a Letter of Continued Interest. You aren’t telling MIT that you want to attend. Instead, you are making the case for why you are even more impressive today than you were when you first submitted your application. To do this, make sure that your update highlights the key components MIT looks for in any application that is accepted:
Alignment with MIT’s mission
Collaborative and cooperative spirit
Initiative
Risk-taking
Hands-on creativity
Intensity, curiosity, and excitement
The ability to prioritize balance
You can also send new test scores through the Application Status Page if you happened to take the SAT or ACT again after you submitted your MIT application. You do not need to send official score reports unless you are accepted.
And if you were planning to submit a portfolio for your EA application, you can send one in by January 5. You cannot, however, make changes or additions to a portfolio that was previously submitted.
Once you have updated MIT, it’s time to wait. Your Regular Decision applications are in, MIT has fresh information on how awesome you are, and you are focusing on keeping your grades up and your activities impressive. This part of the process can be painful, but you need to be patient to see the payoff in the end.
If you are overwhelmed by the post-deferral process, get in touch. We help driven students pull off outstanding acceptances.
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