Deferred applications may refer to application records deferred from an early decision or early action review process to a regular decision process. Or, deferred applications may refer to application records admitted to one enrollment term that ultimately matriculate in a later enrollment term.

When applications are being deferred, whether from early decision to regular decision or for a deferred admission such as a gap year, several steps must be taken to continue moving the record through the application process and maintain accurate records for reporting. 

Deferring from Early Decision to Regular Decision

When an application record is being deferred for a later review in the same application cycle, the best practice recommendation is to track this movement using a decision code.

Procedurally, partner institutions should:

1. Create a Defer to RD bin in the Reader and move application records that are being deferred to this bin. The applications will be held here until the regular decision review process starts.

2. Create a Defer to RD decision code. Assign this decision code to applicable files using Query/Batch Management. Do not clear the files from the bin structure.

3. Confirm and release these decisions using Decision Release.

4. When the review process for regular decision begins and these application records are evaluated again, they can be moved to the appropriate bin to be assigned their final decisions.

5. Complete the process by again using Decision Release.

Deferring for a Gap Year

For application records admitted to one enrollment term who ultimately wish to matriculate in a later enrollment term (such as taking a gap year), clone the application to the new period and round. This process ensures that these application records will be counted as applicants and admits in the year that they submitted their applications, and will also be counted as enrolled in the year of their actual enrollment term. It keeps application records from being counted twice in any category (applied, admitted, enrolled).

1. Go to the application record.

2. Select Edit Application Details in the right-side pane.

3. In the dialog box, select Clone.

4. Add a decision of Enroll.

To maintain an accurate count of applications in the current period, be sure to leave the application round on the original application as is.

Partner institutions may choose to have a field that indicates the application record has been deferred. Such a field makes it possible to easily include or exclude these records from queries and reports.