Carnegie Mellon Deferred You: Now What?

Submit a letter of continued interest as soon as possible, and afterward, have your guidance counselor email the admissions office to update them on your awards, publications, accomplishments, and grades since you applied. They should affirm that no matter what other admission decisions you receive, you will choose to attend Carnegie Mellon if offered a spot.

But not just any letter of continued interest. This letter should be one of the most inspired pieces of writing you've ever composed. In it, you need to let your heart write a love song for Carnegie Mellon and translate that into giving the reader a concrete picture of exactly who you will be as a person on their campus. This includes demonstrating how you will contribute to spaces and organizations on campus and reminding the reader of your academic hook. In reintroducing your hook, the academic niche you spent time and effort carving out in high school to distinguish yourself from others, you want to remind the reader how you can change the world for the better if you have the opportunity to leverage specific academic opportunities at CMU.

I personally recommend starting the letter with something funny or lighthearted. It is naturally awkward reading something from someone whom you, in a sense, rejected. To make the experience as cringe-free as possible for the admissions officer, I wouldn't reference the deferral explicitly or convey any feelings of disappointment.

After a lighthearted and positive introduction, proceed to talk about something related to your niche, a new cutting-edge development or something new that you learned. Connect this to something currently going on at Carnegie Mellon and explain how, by leveraging certain opportunities there, you can achieve some goal that changes the world.

Afterward, paint them a picture of you on their campus. Have fun here. Feel free to write a hypothetical scenario of you making some of the best memories of your life there. You want the reader to feel like by not admitting you, they will be denying you the opportunity to live your best life for four years. Show them you doing activities that have garnered you friends in high school on their campus. Show them how your hobbies or talents will brighten up the days of your Carnegie Mellon classmates. Present yourself as someone they want on their campus.

To conclude, thank the reader for their time and for the opportunity to share your favorite subjects and hobbies. Tell them that no matter what other decisions you receive, you are absolutely resolute in attending Carnegie Mellon, and that if you are offered a seat, you will immediately accept. Include a signed signature.

Upload your letter directly to your applicant portal. When it comes to bragging about grades, prizes, or publications, save it. If you made it this far in the admissions process at a school like Carnegie Mellon, you already have enough academic credentials to be a strong candidate. If you didn't, you wouldn't be deferred and reevaluated in the regular decision round, you would have been rejected.

Your guidance counselor should be the one bragging on your behalf. When they do it, it carries much more weight and shows CMU that there is something beyond those accomplishments to consider. By your guidance counselor going out of their way to share your accomplishments with the admissions office, it demonstrates that there is something compelling enough about your personhood for them to be doing this. Given how accomplished you must be to be even deferred from Carnegie Mellon, this intangible quality they can infer is what will distinguish you from other overachievers.

If you'd like help writing your letter of continued interest for Carnegie Mellon or any other school, please schedule a free consultation with us below.