MIT Deferred You: Now What?

Submit your February Updates & Notes (FUN) Form as soon as possible, the moment it becomes available. Don't wait until the February 5th deadline. Afterward, have your guidance counselor call or at least email the admissions office to update them concerning all of 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 MIT if offered a spot.

MIT does things differently than other schools. Instead of a traditional letter of continued interest, you'll submit updates through their FUN Form. This form has a strict 250-word limit for updates and is required of all applicants, including those who were deferred. But don't let the casual name or short word count fool you, this is one of the most important pieces of writing you'll produce in this entire admissions cycle.

Many students treat the FUN Form as an afterthought, a place to dump a few bullet points about grades and move on. This is a mistake. The 250-word limit isn't a suggestion to be brief; it's a challenge to be precise. Every single word needs to earn its place.

Think of the FUN Form as a highly concentrated letter of continued interest. You have 250 words to remind MIT's admissions committee exactly who you are, why you belong at MIT specifically, and what kind of presence you'll be on their campus. This is not the place for generic enthusiasm. This is where you make the reader see you walking through Lobby 7, working late in a UROP lab, or building something ridiculous for the next East Campus event.

Here's the strategic approach that will set you apart from other deferred applicants:

Your guidance counselor handles the bragging. When it comes to grades, prizes, publications, or accomplishments, let your counselor be the one to share these with MIT. When they do it, it carries much more weight and shows the admissions committee that there is something beyond those accomplishments to consider. By your guidance counselor going out of their way to call or email the admissions officer, it demonstrates that there is something compelling enough about your personhood for them to advocate this strongly on your behalf.

You handle the vision. Your 250 words should paint a vivid picture of exactly who you will be as a person on MIT's campus. This means demonstrating how you will contribute to specific spaces and organizations at MIT, reconnecting with your academic hook, the niche you spent time carving out in high school, and showing the reader what it would look like for you to pursue that passion at MIT specifically.

Given how accomplished you must be to be even deferred from MIT in 2025, the intangible quality the admissions committee can infer from your counselor's advocacy, combined with the concrete vision you articulate in your FUN Form, is what will distinguish you from other overachievers.

MIT says you can write in bullet points or use casual language. Ignore this. Write prose. Write something that could only come from you and could only be about MIT.

After a brief, engaging opening, discuss something related to your academic niche, perhaps a new cutting-edge development in your field or something new you've learned since applying. Connect this to something currently happening at MIT: a specific lab, a professor's recent work, a course that excites you, or a student organization aligned with your interests. Show how leveraging these opportunities will help you achieve a concrete goal, and help the reader understand how achieving this goal can create real impact.

Then paint them a picture of you on their campus. Write a hypothetical scenario of you making some of the best memories of your life at MIT. 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 activities that have garnered you friends and fulfillment in high school, but transplanted to MIT's unique environment, whether that's hacking culture, living groups, or the collaborative intensity of problem sets at 2 AM.

End by reaffirming that MIT is your first choice and that you will attend if admitted. Mean it.

MIT has been transparent about the mechanics of the FUN Form:

• Your midyear grades (required)

• New awards, activities, work, or accomplishments

• Significant changes to your circumstances

• Updated test scores (if improved)

They also say that if you only have grades to report, that's fine. But "fine" doesn't get you admitted from a pool of 7,000+ deferred applicants. The students who get in are the ones who treat every touchpoint with the admissions office as an opportunity to reinforce their candidacy.

What MIT does NOT want:

• Weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly update emails

• Calls to the admissions office asking about your status

• New letters of recommendation replacing existing ones

• Rewrites of your essays or any part of your application

The FUN Form is your one shot. Make it count.

Supplemental Portfolio: If you were planning to submit a supplemental portfolio during Early Action but ran out of time, you can still submit one. The deadline is January 5th. However, MIT advises against submitting one if you weren't already planning to, don't use this as a Hail Mary.

Updated Test Scores: If you're retaking the SAT or ACT in December or January and see improvement, you can self-report your new scores through your application portal. MIT doesn't require official score reports for self-reported scores.

MIT typically defers about 62-67% of their Early Action applicants. For context, only about 5-6% of EA applicants are admitted outright, while roughly 25-30% are denied. Being deferred puts you in a large pool.

Historically, MIT admits between 150-250 deferred students during Regular Action each year. Given the size of the deferred pool (often 7,000-8,000 students), this translates to roughly a 2-3% acceptance rate for deferred applicants. These aren't great odds, but they're not zero either.

Deferred students make up roughly 15-20% of MIT's total admitted class. You're not being kept on a string, MIT genuinely finds admits from this pool every year. The question is whether your FUN Form will make you one of them.

1. Submit your supplemental portfolio by January 5th only if you were already planning to submit one during EA.

2. Draft your FUN Form now. Don't wait until the form goes live. Write multiple drafts. Edit ruthlessly. Get every word right. This 250-word statement should be one of the most polished pieces of writing you've ever produced.

3. Submit the FUN Form immediately when it opens in late January. Do not wait until the February 5th deadline.

4. Have your counselor make an advocacy call to MIT's admissions office right after you submit. Arm them with your recent accomplishments, grades, and awards. Have them affirm your commitment to attending MIT if admitted. Let them do the bragging so your FUN Form can do the inspiring.

5. Self-report improved test scores through your portal if applicable.

6. Focus on your other applications and finish senior year strong. MIT's Regular Action decisions come out in mid-March. Until then, the best thing you can do is execute this plan and then put MIT out of your mind.

If you'd like help crafting a FUN Form that will make MIT's admissions committee see exactly who you'll be on their campus, schedule a free consultation with us.