Deferrals and rejections are a part of the admissions process, even for the student who has perfect straight As and top test scores. These attributes are no longer enough to guarantee success in the elite college admissions game. 

Were you deferred by Penn State for the Class of 2030 in the Early Action round? If so, you’re likely wondering if you genuinely have a shot of earning admission to your dream school in the Regular Decision round or if it would be more worthwhile to cut bait and focus on the other schools to which you’ll be applying. 

If you were rejected, however, you’re now looking for a new dream school, right? We can help with that too! You’ll need to fix your applications and readjust your Regular Decision list. You’re not on the Titanic; we can still turn this ship around!

What Percentage of Early Action Applicants Does Penn State Typically Defer?

Penn State only offers a non-binding Early Action application option, rather than Early Decision. They do not share the number of students they defer or accept from the Early Action pool, with one exception: the Class of 2027. Can we say why they chose to release that year’s Early Action data? Nope! But we can use it as a benchmark for the general chances for students applying EA versus RD to Penn State. 

Penn State Early Action and Regular Decision Acceptance Rate

Penn State has not yet confirmed their Regular Decision acceptance rate for the Class of 2029. For the Class of 2028, based on the Penn State Common Data Set for 2024-2025, the acceptance rate was 60.0%.

Admissions Cycle	Penn State Class Year	Early Action Admission Rate	Regular Decision Admission Rate
2025-2026	Class of 2030	Not Reported	Not Reported
2024-2025	Class of 2029	Not Reported	Not Reported
2023-2024	Class of 2028	Not Reported	60.6%
2022-2023	Class of 2027	70.3%	54.2%
2021-2022	Class of 2026	Not Reported	55.2%
2020-2021	Class of 2025	Not Reported	57.6%
2019-2020	Class of 2024	Not Reported	54.2%

What Percentage of Early Action Applicants Does Penn State Typically Accept?

Penn State did not release the number of students who apply Early Action or the percentage of those students who are admitted to the school for the Class of 2028 or any of the years preceding that, except for the Class of 2027, which had a 70.3% Early Action Acceptance rate. 

Additionally, the school website recommends applying Early Action if they are among a student’s top choice schools, stating, “ By applying before the Early Action deadline, you will be among the first students to be considered for admission to Penn State, when we have more flexibility in our decisions. Admission to Penn State becomes more competitive as the year progresses, which is why we encourage students to submit a complete application prior to the Early Action deadline.”

What Should Applicants Do After Being Deferred by Penn State

PostMortem Application Review

After a deferral from Penn State, the best step forward is to set up Ivy Coach’s PostMortem application review. 

During the PostMortem session, Ivy Coach’s counselor, a former elite college admissions officer, will:

• Provide in-depth feedback on up to three of a student’s college applications. Ivy Coach’s counselor will review both essay and non-essay sections of each one.
• Brainstorm a more compelling extracurricular hook to place a student in the most advantageous spot for admission. The goal is to thread this hook through the entire application, providing a student their own unique perspective to showcase to admissions officers.
• Fix mistakes. And trust us, there will be mistakes. No student’s first application is completely perfect. In fact, most contain a large number of errors. Even something seemingly insignificant can have a negative effect on the admissions game, especially the lower a school’s acceptance rate drops.
• Craft a stronger Regular Decision school list. We’re very good at spotting gaps in a student’s list where we know they would be a competitive applicant, so we make sure those are added for consideration.

Common Mistakes Caught During Ivy Coach’s PostMortem

Among the many, many, many applications that we’ve reviewed at Ivy Coach, a lot of the mistakes are pretty similar. Sometimes students have clearly gotten outdated advice. Sometimes they might’ve just gotten bad advice. We’re here to correct all of that. The ones we’ve listed below are by no means exhaustive, but these are some of the most common ones we catch. 

• A Personal Statement focusing on any of our five forbidden topics: sports, music, community service, grandparents, or travel.
• A Why College essay that’s a copied and pasted version of their Why College essay for a different school. Even if students swapped out the names of classes and professors, admissions officers can tell when they’re reading a Mad Lib submission. And that doesn’t show genuine excitement about a school at all, does it?
• A student included the dollar amount that they fundraised for a charitable cause. Dollar signs make students come across as unlikable.
• The student listed out all of their activities, honors, and community service hours all in one essay, trying to impress admissions officers. Ivy Coach’s students don’t have to try to impress admissions officers. They just do.
• The application is too well-rounded. That hasn’t worked on admissions officers in about 30 years. You read that right. The crucial part of a successful application is its uniqueness, the singularity of a student’s hook. Not that they look like a duplicate of every other applicant, no no!
• Applying for a school that they weren’t competitive enough for in the first place. At Ivy Coach, we tell it like it is. If a student’s Early Action or Early Decision choice wasn’t the right one, we’ll be honest. That’s our policy.

Write a Letter of Continued Interest

The Letter of Continued Interest that a student will write is a very important part of turning their deferral into an offer of admission in the next few months. That’s why it’s crucial to make certain your child is only writing a letter that will help their case, not hurt them.

Your child’s Letter of Continued Interest must be a love letter to the university. Think about it: you wouldn’t want to read a generic, fill-in-the-blank love letter that could apply to anyone, right? That wouldn’t be endearing or likable. Admissions officers don’t want a generic Letter of Continued Interest for their school. They want something chock full of details that show a student is excited to contribute to the school via their singular hook.

The Letter of Continued Interest also needs to catch the attention of an admissions officer right from the first sentence. Every word should pack a punch. Bam! Using that (right) hook, a student should demonstrate how they’re in a unique position to benefit the school, and they have to make it clear and easy for admissions officers to understand. Don’t make the admissions officers do extra work; your application should not be a logic puzzle!

What a Letter of Continued Interest Should Not Do

There are certain things to note that the Letter of Continued Interest should not contain. Under no circumstances should there be academic updates included. We don’t care if your child got an A+ on their AP Stats Midterm. First of all, they shouldn’t have even taken Statistics as a senior. Second of all, it sounds like bragging, and bragging is unlikable. 

A Letter of Continued Interest also needs to creatively keep an admissions officer engaged. Here’s a hot tip: it shouldn’t start with their name. It should paint a clear picture of that singular unique hook, showcasing how they’ll contribute their hook to the specific aspects of the school, like its programs, institutes, culture, traditions, and activities.

If this advice is different from anything else you’ve heard (and it we know it probably is), we’re sorry your time was wasted by whoever you heard that from. We know there’s a lot of bad advice floating around out there. Hopefully, there’s still time to correct those mistakes before your child submits a letter full of mistakes.

When Applicants Should Submit Their Letters of Continued Interest

We recommend students always submit their Letter of Continued Interest as soon as they can, ideally within a few days of receiving a deferral. For example, if a student hears that they are deferred on December 15th, we like students to send in their Letters of Continued Interest by December 20th.

However, we will never tell a student to send that letter in the few days leading up to Christmas or between Christmas and New Year’s. Admissions officers deserve a holiday, too, don’t they? In that case, we have students wait to send the letter in until a few days into the New Year. 

It’s important to note that we only said wait to send, NOT wait to write. That letter is going to be exactly how we’d encourage a student to reposition their Regular Decision applications, many of which will be due January 1st. So, they should draft that letter and then use it as a blueprint moving through the rest of the admission process.

A Deferred Student’s Chances Improve Dramatically with Ivy Coach

Students who choose to work with Ivy Coach immediately after being deferred, if they play their cards right, still have a genuine shot at admission. 

However, we’re realistic at Ivy Coach. Remember, we’re all about honesty. Because of this, we can only take on students after a deferral if they fully understand that their chances simply aren’t as strong as when they first applied. All we do is give them the best possible chance. If quadrupling a student’s chances post-deferral is not enough, then we wish them luck!

What To Do After Being Rejected By Penn State

If your child was rejected by Penn State, they’re not alone. The school rejects about 40% of students applying each year, which is almost half. We never want students to feel discouraged based off of one rejection, though. 

There’s still time for a student to move forward and end up successful in the admissions process. All a student has to do is be willing to fix their initial mistakes and reframe their application narrative the way that we suggest.

Are you and your child ready to move forward and take the next step in the college admissions journey? Then it’s time to sign up for Ivy Coach’s PostMortem. One of our former elite university admissions officers will work with you to develop a competitive strategy for Regular Decision admission.

Next Steps After a Penn State Rejection: PostMortem Application Review

After hearing back that you were rejected from Penn State, the time is nigh to contact Ivy Coach for a PostMortem application review. But first, take a deep breath. It’s all going to work out. Know that lots of other candidates have been in the same spot before, and they all lived happily ever after. After you’ve taken a moment to rejuvenate yourself, you can dive in with renewed vigor and understand that you’ve been given a blessing in disguise. You have the chance to change your application strategy before you send it off to other schools, and you’re going to want to take that chance. 

During Ivy Coach’s PostMortem, we:

• Help you to rework the current applications you’re in the process of completing. We go through both the essay and non-essay portions of each application and suggest changes as we go. The schools you’re prioritizing will likely change now that you’ve been rejected from your top choice. And you may think your RD applications are pretty much done, but, after receiving a reflection from Penn State, why would you want to double down on the same mistakes?
• Work to present you as a uniquely talented individual rather than a well-rounded one. Well-rounded is never a successful strategy in elite college admissions. We’ll be the first to tell you that. If you come across as too well-rounded with a bunch of disparate activities that don’t thread together, you will confuse admissions officers. Instead, you need to pivot to a strategy that actually works: the singular hook.
• Correct the seemingly insignificant mistakes that likely played a part in your rejection decision. Sometimes, the reason for rejection can be incredibly small, but when colleges have such a surplus of applicants to choose from, they can (and will) be really, really picky. For instance, students who brag do themselves no favor in the Penn State admissions process. News flash: no one likes a braggart. Writing about how you raised thousands of dollars for a charity or were selected out of a huge pool of applicants for a seemingly prestigious but actually totally unimpressive summer enrichment program at a highly selective university counts as bragging!
• Reevaluate your admissions prospects and consider taking advantage of the Early Decision II round for a school that, while perhaps slightly less of a reach than Penn State, hits the sweet spot between prestige and realism. Not all students are right for ED II, and not all schools offer an ED II round. So it’s time to buckle down and do your research in order to determine an admissions pathway that works for you.

Application Assistance

Following your PostMortem session, which is the first step for us to understand what went wrong with your application and how you need to reposition your narrative, we will:

• Overhaul all of your applications with Ivy Coach’s assistance. You have a game plan. Ready, set, execute! Strip all your other applications of the common mistakes and put yourself in the best possible spot for a positive admissions decision. Although we can’t correct every error you’ve made throughout your past four years, there’s a lot we can still fix in terms of your application narrative and how you hope to sway admissions officers to root for you.

Penn State University Deferral and Rejection FAQ

When does Penn State typically revisit the applications of their deferred pool?

Like most highly selective universities, Penn State returns its attention to deferred candidates towards the end of the Regular Decision cycle, typically in the last two weeks.

What’s the point of maintaining good grades and test scores now that I know Penn State might be (or definitely is) off of the table?

Don’t let a deferral or rejection set you back. We know, it can be disheartening and throw you off your game. It’s still absolutely essential that you strive for excellent academic performance as you round out your senior year. Your application will definitely not receive any further consideration if you let your grades slip, and you won’t be a strong candidate for any other schools if you’re boasting Cs, either!

If I was rejected from Penn State, is all hope lost?

No, that’s a terrible attitude to take! We won’t give up on you after one rejection, and you should still believe in yourself, too. You absolutely have a shot, potentially a school you like better than Penn State, if you take our advice and turn your application around by crafting that singular narrative with a compelling, powerful hook.

Getting Started with Ivy Coach After a Penn State Deferral or Rejection

If you’re interested in Ivy Coach’s plan to optimize your child’s Regular Decision case for admission to Penn State’s Class of 2030 in the event of a deferral, or if you need help planning for Regular Decision applications after a deferral or rejection, we advise you fill out our complimentary consultation form. We’ll reach out to let you know our go-forward process.