Deferred or waitlisted: what to do next

AA deferral or a waitlist letter means something more specific inside an admissions committee than most families assume, and what we learned from Stanford's admissions office makes it more hopeful too. The letter says the college has deferred your early application to the regular round, or placed you on the waitlist, and families tend to read it as a soft denial.

That reading is understandable, and it leads to two common mistakes: giving up on the college entirely, or answering with a flood of material. Seen from inside the room where the vote was taken, the letter says something about your file that many files never earn, and it hints at what might still move it. The explanation begins with how the vote worked.