Final Decision Letters From College Admissions Offices: What You Need To Know

Once upon a time (aka, just a few years ago), the word was out that the heft of an envelope from a college admissions office was a big hint as to what their admission decision was for you. The bigger the envelope, the better the decision! While a few colleges still send out decisions by regular mail, those days have come and gone. Many, if not most, colleges now simply send out acceptance, deferral, waitlist or denial letters by email.

When Can You Expect To Hear?

Unless you are a Rolling Admission, Early Action or Decision applicant, you will hear from college admissions offices sometime during the spring. Some colleges let students know during February and March, but the more competitive colleges send out their decisions in early April.

In the emails or envelopes you receive, there are four categories of responses to your applications, including:

•    Acceptance
•    Deferred Admission
•    Waitlist
•    Denial

What do each of those responses mean?

I.  Acceptance
An acceptance response is simple and clear:  You’re in!  You’ve been admitted – we hope to see you in the fall!

II.  Deferred Admission, Regular Application (not Early Applications)

Another response a few regular applicants receive is deferred admission. What is that? Some colleges who fill their fall admissions quota quickly or find an applicant a little less qualified than other admits (but still compelling enough), defer a student by giving him/her the option of enrolling during second quarter or semester of freshman year. This is sometimes done for applicants with learning disabilities. Other schools defer a student to sophomore year, providing that he or she takes a year at another college and gets a minimum GPA (often 3.0 or above).

In summary, a deferred admission means that eventually you can go to a college, but you may have to wait awhile or fulfill certain types of conditions before you do.

III.  Waitlist

As you know, many airline companies overbook their flights, assuming that some passengers won’t show up and there will be other people waiting to fill their seats. In a similar fashion, in order for a college to insure that it will have a full freshman class, an admissions office will sometimes create a waitlist; that is, a list of students to whom admittance might be offered should fewer students than predicted say yes to their admission offers.

Being waitlisted has the effect of saying to an applicant, “You’re not admitted right now, but you may be a little later.” The number of students that admissions offices admit from waitlists varies from year to year. Some years it is zero and other years it can be in the hundreds.

If you are waitlisted, but still want to attend the college, you should let the admissions office know immediately that you want to remain on the waitlist. Since you can’t count on getting off the waitlist, in the meantime you should accept admission to another school by the May 1 deadline. If you should get off a wait list (and that might be any time from early May until right before school starts in the fall), you must then decide if you want to accept the admission offer. If the answer is yes, very quickly accept admission and let the first school to whom you said yes know that you have decided to attend another college.

IV.  Denial

Then there’s the big D: denial of admission. Nobody likes to be rejected, but every year almost every college will have more qualified applicants than they have room for. So, admissions officers deny a number of applicants. Sometimes, denials are given to students who are less qualified than other applicants, but very often denials are given to highly qualified students. You just never know.

What’s The Final Step?

Once you get the news about your admission from a college, you might still have some choices. For example, if you have been accepted to more than one college, you need to decide on just one college. If you receive a deferral, you must decide if you want to accept the conditions of the deferral. If you are waitlisted, you can accept another admissions offer and mount an acceptance campaign with the college at which you were waitlisted.  And if you are denied by a college, it’s time to move on with your life and make a good decision about where you want to go to college among the choices you have.

Whatever your decision is, be sure to carefully read the instructions noted in your decision letters and act accordingly within the time frames that are provided. This is the final step in the long admissions process that has taken up so much of your senior year. Finally, you can relax, enjoy and celebrate!

- Marjorie Hansen Shaevitz

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