If you’ve been deferred by Harvard, you are not alone. Harvard is notorious at this point for deferring an enormous percentage of early admission applicants. While most elite colleges with early admissions programs, like early decision and early action, only defer students they are seriously considering for the next freshman class, the statistics Harvard has released on early admission suggest that they take a very different approach.
In 2022, Harvard accepted 7.56% of Early Action applicants. This isn’t surprising, as it was the third year in a row that the early acceptance rate was below 8%. The number most people forget to look at though, is the 78%. Seventy-eight percent of early applicants were deferred. Only 9.5% were denied. It was harder, in the 2022-2023 application cycle, to be denied from Harvard Early Action than it was to be deferred. That is, to put it lightly, wild.
So, if you were deferred, welcome to the club. There are some things you need to do next (and quickly) to increase your chances of eventual admission and set yourself up for a successful college application experience.
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What Harvard Wants
After a deferral, Harvard doesn’t want much. This isn’t surprising given how many students they defer — it would be a lot of updates to read! They do want you to send your mid-year school report and grades in February, and there are a few instances where an additional short update for the admissions office may be useful.
Consider updating the admissions office if — and only if — something truly notable that would be a relevant addition to your application that you would have highlighted if it had happened before you pressed submit happened after you early application was sent in. For example, perhaps you won an award or a significant regional or national recognition. An ‘A’ on a calculus test or being elected Captain of the Junior Varsity soccer team, or anything else along that vein, does not qualify as notable to Harvard post-deferral and should not be sent to the admissions committee.
Harvard also wants you to consider other options (which we’ll get into next). Students do get in after a deferral, so your chances aren’t zero, but given the regular decision acceptance rate — 3.45% overall — the probability isn’t good. If they loved your application before, they would have offered you a spot. By deferring you, they kicked the can down the road, keeping you in the mix while saying “ehhh, but can we see what else there is before making a decision?” We know this is a huge bummer, but you need to use it as a motivational catalyst for your next steps.
What Else You Need to Do
There are three things that you need to do after being deferred from Harvard that have nothing to do with Harvard.
1. Look at Your List
You’ve probably agonized over your college list, but that’s the pre-Harvard deferral list. Now you live in a post-deferral world, and you’ll need to go back and reassess. Being deferred by Harvard does not mean that you are not a strong candidate for an elite school. If you were totally unqualified, they would have rejected you, but being in a pool of thousands of deferred students isn’t too reassuring either.
For your regular decision cycle, it is imperative that you have a good mix of target and likely schools, in addition to a reach or two. Building the right college list is more art than science, and your list should be unique to you. In a world of plummeting acceptance rates, you need to be strategic, pragmatic, and realistic. You may even want to consider applying Early Decision II to another of your top choices, as that will give you a useful leg-up when they consider your application. This would me ‘giving up’ on Harvard, but you need to think with your head and your heart to end up at a perfect fit.
If you’re looking at your college list and feeling at a loss, we can help. We’re experts at this.
2. Take Another Look at Your Common App Essay
You wrote a common app essay already, we know — and it wasn’t so bad that it got you rejected from Harvard. But it also wasn’t so good that it got you in. We’ve found that when you have the grades, the scores, the activities, and the focus for a particular school, it really all comes down to the essays. We’ve written a comprehensive guide for how to write an outstanding common app essay, and we’ve also shared real essays that helped students gain admission to top schools, like Penn, USC, Duke, and, yes, Harvard. Give them a read, check out the guide, and ask yourself: “Does my essay meet this standard?”
If you have doubts, see room for improvement, or think you need a complete overhaul, you need to start now. We actually have a ‘bootcamp’ for students just like you who are looking at their common app essay and wondering how to make it truly make a difference for their application.
3. Finish Early
Once you have your revised college list and your refreshed (or rewritten) common app essay, you need to finish getting your ducks in a row. Write all of the supplements for your regular decision or EDII schools as soon as possible — even the ones that are intimidating, or for schools you’re really not all that excited about. It is very important that you have time to edit, reflect, and edit some more before pressing submit.
Getting all of this done can be really intimidating and overwhelming, so it’s important to ask from help from those you trust. This may be asking a teacher to review a supplement you’re stuck on, asking a school counselor whether a certain school may be a good fit, or simply commiserating with friends over French fries and milkshakes. If that doesn’t work, consider shooting us an email, we specialize in helping students who received disappointing EA or ED decisions.
We believe in your strength as an applicant and as a person. Sometimes, though, it can take some help to represent yourself fully on the page. Luckily, we’re pros at that.