It’s officially the season where you may be faced with the difficult news of an admission decision that feels like a non-decision: deferral.
Now, if you don’t read beyond this paragraph, here is what I want you to get out of this blog post: yes, deferral sucks, and I’m giving you permission to scream at the sky and go get your favorite sweet treat. But, in the long term, I promise that you do not have to let a deferral pause your entire life.
Years down the line from my own deferred admission decisions, I am alive, well, and (begrudgingly, I’ll admit) better for facing the hardship.
Even so, how do you fight the feeling of being in limbo, especially if you’re the the type of student who wants a plan sooner rather than later?
Speaking From (My Own Deferral) Experience
The first thing I did was cry. I want to affirm that all emotions when receiving a deferred decision are valid – defeat, sadness, confusion, anger (though this is not permission to be unkind to anyone). If you’re anything like me, you’re the type of student who has done well your entire school career, and you are not used to what you perceive as a misstep.
I also want to assure you that this is not a failure. College admission is a tough process, and the people reviewing your application do not really know you. They know the pieces of you presented in your application, which is a tiny piece of your total person.
They can’t know the little details: that you’ve made friends laugh until they cried; that you read to your little brother every night as a kid; or that you have a burn scar on your foot from roasting marshmallows over a fire without wearing shoes and your grandad put (salted) butter on it because he thought it would help (he was a Tech alumnus, by the way). Maybe that last one is just me? I hope so.
I hope someone has told you this before, but you need to internalize it: you are more than an admission decision. And I truly mean that, because we are all people who have been on the applicant side before, either as an undergraduate or more recently as graduate students.
I was deferred and ultimately denied at one college, and deferred and ultimately admitted to the one I ended up attending.
This might be strange, but I think far more about the deferral to the school I ended up attending than my denial from the other school. Mostly in the context that I graduated Summa Cum Laude with two degrees in four years, and I’d often think “I can’t believe they almost passed me by.” That is because, I’ll say it again, college admission staff do not know the full you. They do their very best with the pieces they have, but ultimately, they are just that: pieces.
I am a strong believer that you will end up where you need to be. Though it is hard now, I encourage you to have faith in the process and try to enjoy finding the place where you belong. Explore other options and see what feels right. What do you like about a specific school? Which other schools could replicate that vibe, whether it be similar academic programs, the environment, the athletics?
What Happens Next?
Of course, this doesn’t mean there aren’t other action items for you now. If you’re a deferred student and suffer from a fixation on plans and action items, I’ll share a few steps I took after my deferrals based on where I knew I could show more of my capabilities:
What I did
- Made sure I finished fall semester strong (no senioritis allowed!).
- Submit updated records to the admission office when requested. (At Georgia Tech, deferred students can submit the deferred supplemental form and view other next steps in their admission portal).
What I tried not to do (and should have done less of)
- Repeatedly check my application status page.
- Tediously compare myself to the folks who did get in.
- Count myself out.
These suggestions differ on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, you have truly done all that you can do. If you’ve given it your all, try to rest easy, knowing you’ve done what you can. And don’t make me tap the sign.
Amanda Budd is a communications officer in Enrollment Management at Georgia Tech. She joined the division in Summer 2023 and writes a variety of content for Undergraduate Admission, Financial Aid, and beyond. She cares deeply about access to education and sharing the ongoing work to expand access at Tech.