If your child was either deferred or rejected after applying to Bryn Mawr College, that can be disappointing. For students who were deferred from Bryn Mawr’s Class of 2030, they won’t hear back about their application as part of the Regular Decision release by mid-March.

We know that feels like a long time to wait, especially for those eager students who intentionally applied early in the hope of getting through the admission process and enjoying the rest of senior year. In the meantime, there are steps forward that students can take to put themselves in a good spot for the rest of the college admissions process. 

What Percentage of Early Decision I and Early Decision II Applicants Does Bryn Mawr Typically Defer?

Bryn Mawr offers both Early Decision I and Early Decision II, both of which are binding application options. The school does not share the number of students they defer from either of those rounds of admission. 

Bryn Mawr College EDI & EDII Acceptance Rate

Bryn Mawr’s Class of 2028 acceptance rate was 29.4%. Out of 4,094 applicants, they admitted 1,205 students.

Admissions Cycle	Bryn Mawr Class Year	Early Decision I and Early Decision II 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	36.6%	29.4%
2022-2023	Class of 2027	57.9%	31.1%
2021-2022	Class of 2026	62.3%	30.7%
2020-2021	Class of 2025	57.4%	39.3%
2019-2020	Class of 2024	48.4%	38.4%
2018-2019	Class of 2023	51.7%	33.1%
2017-2018	Class of 2022	52.5%	34.1%
2016-2017	Class of 2021	52.5%	38.0%
2015-2016	Class of 2020	52.3%	39.9%
2014-2015	Class of 2019	50.2%	38.5%
2013-2014	Class of 2018	50.2%	49.5%

What Percentage of Early Decision Applicants Does Bryn Mawr Typically Accept?

Across their Early Decision applicants, Bryn Mawr admitted 167 of 456 applicants to the Class of 2028. That’s a 36.6% acceptance rate, only about 6% higher than their Regular Decision acceptance rate.

What Should Applicants Do After Being Deferred by Bryn Mawr?

PostMortem Application Review

After being deferred from Bryn Mawr, we recommend expediently setting up Ivy Coach’s PostMortem application review. 

During the PostMortem session, we will:

• Provide detailed feedback on up to three college applications. Ivy Coach’s counselor, a former elite college admissions officer, will review both essay and non-essay portions of the applications.
• Brainstorm a powerful extracurricular hook to boost a student’s chances in the application process. This hook will strengthen their narrative and set them apart from other applicants they’ll be competing against, both neighbors they know and strangers they don’t.
• Fix application errors. There are always mistakes on a student’s application. Think about it: a student has never been on the other side of the process; how could they know what changes an admissions officer’s mind from “reject” to “accept”? Our counselors are experts on what to do and what not to do when it comes to the elite admissions process.
• Redraft your child’s Regular Decision school list. College lists frequently have gaps where students didn’t realize they should be applying. We’re happy to fill those gaps with the appropriate schools we identify.

Common Mistakes Caught During Ivy Coach’s PostMortem

From application to application, we see a lot of the same mistakes. The below list isn’t necessarily exhaustive, because that would take pages and pages and pages. But these common mistakes are a great place to start when reviewing your child’s application to see how many they made and correct them before they submit to Regular Decision schools. 

• They wrote a Personal Statement about one of our five off-limits topics: sports, music, community service, grandparents, or travel. These topics are way too overdone, and there’s just nothing new a student can say about them. We promise. 
• They sent in a Why College essay that was the same for multiple schools. College admissions is not a game of Mad Libs! These essays need to demonstrate genuine interest, not the ability to copy and paste. A monkey can (probably) do that. 
• They included the dollar amount fundraised for a charitable cause. Dollar signs make students unlikable to admissions officers, not impressive.
• They put everything but the kitchen sink into one essay: every activity, honor, and community service hour they completed over the past four years of high school. That makes it look like a student is trying to impress admissions officers. Our students don’t have to try to impress admissions officers, they just do.
• They submitted a well-rounded application. This is a huge problem; the whole well-rounded thing might’ve worked 30 years ago. But this isn’t the nineties anymore. Unless a student has a compelling, singular hook, they’re getting put right into the rejection pile along with all the other well-rounded applicants.
• They applied to a school that they weren’t a strong enough contender for. At Ivy Coach, we’ll let a student know if their Early choice wasn’t the right one, and we’ll tell them how to course correct moving forward.

Write a Letter of Continued Interest

Your child’s Letter of Continued Interest is the most likely way for them to turn that deferral into an offer of admission. You definitely don’t want the student to be submitting something that’s going to inadvertently hurt them rather than help them.

That being said, the Letter of Continued Interest needs to be a love letter to the school. It’s kind of like dating in real life: there are green flags, and then there are red flags. Your child’s letter should be full of only the green flags. What’s the primary way to do that, you ask? Focus on their singular hook. 

From the very first sentence, a student should be providing compelling details about how their hook puts them in a position to benefit the school, with regard to classes, extracurriculars, campus, and lab offerings, unlike any of the other many deferred students. 

What a Letter of Continued Interest Should Not Do

Just like there are green flags in the Letter of Continued Interest, there are also, you guessed it, red flags. The Letter of Continued Interest definitely should not contain a list of academic updates, first and foremost. Your child only has 650-words to impress admissions officers. Don’t waste it on saying things every other deferred student can also say in their letter.

We want students to stand apart from others in a myriad of ways. The content should be interesting. The letter should be engaging. We don’t want it to start with their first name, for example, because that is super boring. Students need to get creative (but not too creative. No slam poetry). The Letter of Continued Interest should present a clear picture of your child’s singular narrative and display how they’ll contribute their hook to the specific aspects of the school, including programs, institutes, culture, traditions, and activities.

We know there’s a lot of advice about the Letter of Continued Interest, and ours may look a little different. That’s because it’s the best. That’s how we have the success rates that we have with the students we work with, by not being like anyone else.

When Applicants Should Submit Their Letters of Continued Interest

We ideally have students submit their Letter of Continued Interest as soon as possible, usually within a few days of receiving a deferral. So, if a student learns they are deferred on December 15th, we like students to send in their Letters of Continued Interest before December 20th.

The exception to this rule is always, always, always if a student would be submitting their letter in day or two leading up to Christmas or between Christmas and New Year’s. Then, we’d recommend they wait to submit until a few days into the New Year. 

Please note: we said wait to submit, not wait to write. Students should certainly draft that Letter of Continued Interest as soon as possible, because it’s a blueprint for how we’d encourage them to pivot the rest of their applications before they start to submit to schools for Regular Decision.

Chances of Getting into Bryn Mawr After Being Deferred

Bryn Mawr, like many schools, does not release the acceptance stats for students who are admitted after being deferred in either of their Early Decision rounds. 

However, a fairly universal statistic we’ve found at Ivy Coach is that about 10% of deferred candidates ultimately earn admission to the school that kicked the can on their acceptance decision. Although the percentage can vary a bit depending on the year and the school, it serves as a generally consistent threshold.  

If that 10% percent looks a bit low, for students who come to Ivy Coach after being deferred,  that rate of admission jumps up to about 40%. We work one-on-one with a student to craft a compelling Letter of Interest and boost their chances of admission after a deferral, a letter that historically quadruples the likelihood of acceptance. 

A Deferred Student’s Chances Improve Dramatically with Ivy Coach

When a student comes to work with Ivy Coach first after being deferred, if they play their cards right, they do still have a shot at admission. 

We’re also very realistic at Ivy Coach, though. We tell it like it is, as we mentioned above. This means 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 to gain admissions. If quadrupling a student’s chances post-deferral is not enough, we don’t recommend they work with us. Good luck!

What To Do After Being Rejected By Bryn Mawr

Considering Bryn Mawr had an acceptance rate of just under 30% for the Class of 2028, about two thirds of the students who applied were ultimately rejected. If your child is one of them, we want them to know they’re not alone.

We would encourage them not to let that rejection from one school cast a shadow over the rest of their admissions process. As long as a student is willing to fix their initial mistakes and reframe their application narrative in the way that we suggest, they’ll still have a good chance with the other schools on their Regular Decision list.

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

Students come to work with Ivy Coach after rejection because they understand that we’ll guide them smoothly through their Regular Decision process by ensuring they’re not repeating the mistakes that got them rejected in the Early round. Our counselors will optimize a student’s case for Regular Decision admissions by crafting a concrete plan to achieve success.

Getting Started with Ivy Coach After a Bryn Mawr Deferral or Rejection

If you’re interested in Ivy Coach’s plan to optimize your child’s Regular Decision case for admission to the Class of 2030 at Bryn Mawr in the wake of a deferral, or if you need help planning for Regular Decision applications after a deferral or rejection, fill out our complimentary consultation form. We’ll then be in touch to outline our next step forward.