Being deferred is a punch in the gut without the closure. When you are rejected, you know it’s over. With a Penn deferral, the door is still open, and you have a few more months of waiting until you know what the final outcome will be. You can’t just wait passively though, if you want to get in. Not being passive is even more important because your odds of admission after a deferral aren’t great. But you still need to get into a great college. So, there is work to do. In this post, we’ll break down what you need to do for Penn and for the rest of your college applications to achieve your best outcomes.
First, though, let’s talk odds. Penn has not released their deferral statistics for a few years, but back in 2022 they shared that about 9.5% of deferred Early Decision applicants were eventually admitted. That isn’t a terrible statistic, as it is significantly higher than the overall acceptance rate, which was 5.8% for the Class of 2030. Penn highly prioritizes Early Decision applicants, accepting over 50% of the first-year class ED, which tells us that the RD acceptance rate is much lower than the ED acceptance rate — further underlining that you do truly have a chance of getting in, it’s just going to take some effort.
But what do you mean by ‘effort,’ and should I start now? Good questions. Below we’ll dig into everything that you need to do for Penn. The most important next step, though, actually has nothing to do with Penn: It’s your other applications.
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After a deferral, there are two buckets of tasks that need to be addressed. There is the stuff for Penn, of course, but there is also the much bigger, more time consuming, and more urgent bucket full of everything for your Regular Decision college applications. We’ll cover both, obviously, but are going to address all the ‘non-Penn’ stuff first, as the RD deadline will be here painfully soon and even if you think your applications are done and dusted there is almost certainly work to do.
Review Your College List
Since Penn has not released their deferral statistics in recent years, there isn’t a lot we can glean from their deferral decision. Some colleges defer only a tiny number of applicants, rejecting the rest. When that is the case, we know that the student was very close to getting in. Many colleges, though, defer nearly everyone who is not accepted. That, then, tells us nothing. So, what we know is fairly close to nothing if looking solely at your deferral decision.
If we take in your application holistically, though, there are likely a few things that jump out. If your grades and scores were below the 75th-percentile for accepted students, that would be a culprit. If your application did not have a strong academic area of focus, or you applied as ‘undecided’, that too could be to blame. Either of those possibilities could seriously harm your chances of admission to another top-tier school. We’ll get to improving your application in a second, but first you need to right-size your college list.
A solid college list does not need to be longer than 10 schools, but it does need to be balanced. Seven reaches, two targets, and one safety is not balanced, no matter how badly you want to get into those reaches. We work with our students to build college lists that get them into a dream school with the security of confidence, and even certainty. That means 3 or 4 reaches, and then an equal balance of reasonable targets (keyword: reasonable) and safety schools for which you are well above the top range of accepted GPAs and test scores.
Reassess Your Common App Essay
We aren’t saying that you are not a good writer, but we also know that your essay could be much better — even without seeing it. If you have the grades and scores for Penn, you should have gotten in. Why didn’t you get in, then? The answer is simple, but sometimes burns: your story wasn’t good enough.
It isn’t that you haven’t won enough awards, had enough leadership roles, or impressed them enough with your independent intellectual pursuits. It is that you weren’t likeable enough. Ouch, but true.
This means going back to your personal statement and asking, “what are they learning about who I am and how I think from this essay?” Every strong essay should teach the reader about you with a hefty dose of joy, wonder, curiosity, or enthusiasm (or all of the above) in the mix. We have an amazing guide to help you rethink your college essay, and we are here to help, too.
Press Submit
Once you have your applications in order, and before you do anything for Penn, you need to press submit. Penn will not be re-evaluating your application until after the RD deadline, so rushing to get them information quickly actually works against you because you have less time to build up an impressive list of updates (more on that in a moment).
So, before you stress about Penn, please press submit.
What Penn Wants
Now that your RD applications are in, it’s time to turn your attention back to Penn. There are things Penn wants from you as a deferred candidate, but there are also a lot of things that do not go over well and that can actually tank your chances of eventually getting in. Visiting, calling, or emailing admissions asking for an explanation of why you were deferred, for example, would be a very, very bad thing to do. Bold gestures may be memorable, as well, but not in a good way. Instead, follow the playbook Penn lays out.
That does not, however, mean that you should be passive. Deferred students can not do anything else beyond asking your school to send upgraded grades once the term ends, but that would be the wrong call. So, this is what to do.
If your grades and scores weren’t up to par for Penn, you would have been rejected. However, that doesn’t mean they were excited about them. Over the next few weeks, you need to maintain, maintain, maintain, but improving is even better. You can also submit updated SAT or ACT scores if you have them, and are required to submit that mid-year report (also known as a mid-year transcript) we mentioned a moment ago. Talk to your counselor at school to ensure that this happens by mid-February.
Penn also allows you to submit an update to your application, with some really important to register limitations. The update can be submitted through the Penn Applicant Portal. This can only be done once, and they request that you “please be judicious in the information you choose to include in your update.” It must be one document upload, and it must be focused on new information, such as awards, recognitions, leadership roles, or the like.
We guide our students to format this update as a letter to the admissions committee that is no more than one page in length. It must start with a confirmation that Penn remains your first choice and that you will attend if accepted (even if you are waffling on this) and then move quickly to the updates.
Each update should be its own paragraph, be succinct, and get straight to the point. This update is not a supplement, and your letter does not need to be a bold, overarching story. It does, however, need to show both a continued commitment to what you care about most, and academic achievement.
Many student we work with start out saying that they don’t have any updates to share. That is patently false. You’ve been living for the past month and a half since submitting ED, so you most definitely have something to share. Small things, like a project that made you think differently, can often even be more impactful than another award as on your bookshelf.
Once you have written your update, you need to close out the letter with an appropriate sign-off (ex. Sincerely,) and submit it through the applicant portal. And if you are star8ing at the screen stumped about what to say, we can help.
Getting into Penn after a deferral is possible, but it isn’t something you can
‘sit around and see’ about. It takes effort to turn that deferral notice into a letter of acceptance, and even with that effort it isn’t guaranteed. This is why we work with our students to address the whole college application process, not just the dream school deferral, ensuring an exceptional acceptance come spring.
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