Yale Deferred You: Now What?
Submit a strong, distinguishing letter of continued interest ASAP, and 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 Yale 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 Yale 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 of who you are and make yourself impossible to forget.
You can upload your letter of continued interest via the Yale applicant portal. When it comes to bragging about grades, prizes, or publications, please save it. If you made it this far in the admissions process at an elite school like Yale, then you already have enough academic credentials to be a strong candidate. If you did not, then 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 the colleges 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 officer, it demonstrates to them 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 Yale in 2025, where the Single-Choice Early Action acceptance rate was just 10.8% from a pool of nearly 6,800 applicants, with only 17% deferred and 71% rejected outright, this intangible quality they can infer is what will distinguish you from other overachievers. Yale has been rejecting far more early applicants than it defers in recent years. Being deferred from Yale is more meaningful than a deferral from some peer institutions; they didn't shut the door because they genuinely want more time to consider your candidacy.
How to Structure Your Yale Letter of Continued Interest
I recommend starting with something engaging or lighthearted. Reading an update from someone who was, in a sense, not admitted is naturally awkward for an admissions officer. To make the experience as comfortable as possible for the reader, avoid explicitly referencing the deferral or conveying disappointment.
After a lighthearted and positive introduction, I would then proceed to talk to the reader about something related to your niche, such as a new cutting-edge development or something new that you learned. I would then connect this new piece of information regarding your niche to something currently going on at Yale, perhaps a specific research center, a professor's work, or an interdisciplinary program that aligns with your interests. Explain how, by leveraging certain opportunities there, you can achieve some goal, and make the reader understand how achieving this goal can change the world.
Afterward, I would 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. Whether it's walking through the Yale Art Gallery between classes, debating in the common room of your residential college, or collaborating with peers in Sterling Memorial Library late at night, show them you doing activities that have garnered you friends in high school on their campus.
Important Reminders
Do not contact your regional admissions officer directly, submit everything through the portal
Do not drop any courses or reduce the rigor of your senior year
Keep your grades up, mid-year grades matter
Have your guidance counselor advocate on your behalf with a phone call or email
Submit your letter promptly, ideally before the holiday break, to demonstrate continued enthusiasm
If you'd like help writing your letter of continued interest for Yale or any other school, please schedule a free consultation with us below.
