If your child was deferred or rejected from Lafayette College, that can be incredibly disappointing. But don’t lose hope yet! 

For those students who were deferred from the Lafayette College Class of 2030, they’ll now hear back about their application as part of the Regular Decision release in late March. That can feel like ages away, especially for those precocious students who intentionally applied early in the hope of getting the admissions process over with. However, there are still steps that a student can take to set themselves up for success in the Regular Decision round of applicants.

What Percentage of Early Decision I and Early Decision II Applicants Does Lafayette College Typically Defer?

Lafayette College only offers Early Decision, which is the binding application option, rather than Early Action. There are two rounds: ED I and ED II. The school does share the number of students they defer from either of those binding rounds of admission. 

Lafayette College ED & RD Acceptance Rate

Lafayette College’s acceptance rate for the Class of 2029 was 29.5% after they saw a record number of applications.

Admissions Cycle	Lafayette College Class Year	Early Decision Admission Rate	Regular Decision Admission Rate
2025-2026	Class of 2030	Not Reported	Not Reported
2024-2025	Class of 2029	38.0%	29.5%
2023-2024	Class of 2028	42.4%	31.5%
2022-2023	Class of 2027	43.6%	31.5%
2021-2022	Class of 2026	43.4%	33.6%
2020-2021	Class of 2025	43.5%	40.7%
2019-2020	Class of 2024	51.1%	35.6%
2018-2019	Class of 2023	50.8%	31.5%
2017-2018	Class of 2022	51.6%	29.4%
2016-2017	Class of 2021	46.1%	30.8%
2015-2016	Class of 2020	49.0%	28.3%
2014-2015	Class of 2019	48.6%	30.2%
2013-2014	Class of 2018	47.6%	29.7%
2012-2013	Class of 2017	53.1%	34.1%
2011-2012	Class of 2016	56.3%	34.5%
2010-2011	Class of 2015	65.0%	40.3%
2009-2010	Class of 2014	69.0%	41.7%
2008-2009	Class of 2013	61.9%	42.4%
2007-2008	Class of 2012	56.2%	37.2%
2006-2007	Class of 2011	61.0%	34.9%

What Percentage of Early Decision I and Early Decision II Applicants Does Lafayette Typically Accept?

Across their Early Decision applicants, the Class of 2029 saw 356 out of 937 applicants who applied in both the first and second rounds. That’s a 38.0% acceptance rate, almost a full 10% higher than their Regular Decision round. 

What Should Applicants Do After Being Deferred by Lafayette? PostMortem Application Review

After being deferred from Lafayette College, we recommend taking the next step of setting up Ivy Coach’s PostMortem application review. 

During the PostMortem session, we will:

• Offer thorough feedback on up to three college applications. Ivy Coach’s counselor, a former elite college admissions officer, will review both essay and non-essay sections of the applications.
• Brainstorm a compelling extracurricular hook to boost your child’s chances in the Regular Decision application process by strengthening their narrative and setting them apart from other applicants.
• Fix application mistakes. Nobody gets it perfect on the first try, just because students don’t know exactly what admissions officers are (or are not) looking for. They’ve never been on the other side of the process, how could they know what changes an admissions officer’s mind from “reject” to “accept”?
• Complete a stronger Regular Decision school list. College lists are frequently missing schools that a student should be applying to, and we 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 errors. This list isn’t necessarily a comprehensive list, but these mistakes are a good place to start when reviewing your child’s application before they submit to Regular Decision schools. This is especially true if they already submitted an Early application and already made these mistakes in that one.

• Writing a Personal Statement about sports, music, community service, grandparents, or travel. These topics are way too overdone. They’re on our “no way, never ever, totally forbidden” list. 
• Sending in Why College essays that aren’t differentiated enough between schools. College admissions is not a game of Mad Libs! Your child should not be swapping in names of schools, classes, and professors. These essays need to demonstrate genuine interest, not the ability to copy and paste. 
• Listing the dollar amount fundraised for a charitable cause. The hard truth is that dollar signs don’t impress admissions officers, in fact, they make students seem unlikable.
• Speaking of trying to impress admissions officers, one thing that won’t do that is jamming 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 comes across as bragging, which is also totally unlikable.
• Submitting a well-rounded application. This is a big problem, because the whole well-rounded thing hasn’t worked in over 30 years. You read that right! Unless a student has a compelling, singular hook, they’re getting shuffled right into the rejection pile.
• Applying to a school that they weren’t a good contender for in the first place. At Ivy Coach, we’ll let a student know if their Early choice wasn’t the right one. We tell it like it is, and we’ll tell them how to course correct moving forward.

Write a Letter of Continued Interest

A student’s Letter of Continued Interest can be the deciding factor that turns a deferral into an offer of admission. You don’t want your child to be submitting something that’s going to hurt them rather than help them.

That being said, the Letter of Continued Interest needs to be a love letter to the university. Just like dating in real life, there are green flags to be on the lookout for, and 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 selectively on their singular hook. 

From the very first sentence, a student should provide compelling details about how that unique hook puts them in a position to benefit the school, with regard to classes, extracurriculars, lab offerings, etc, 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 is also a list of red flags, obviously. Speaking of lists, Letters of Continued Interest definitely shouldn’t contain a list of academic updates. That letter will only be about 650-words. Don’t waste time mentioning a 100 on the AP Chemistry midterm exam. Something like that will render a student a lot less likable, too.

Another thing that makes students unlikable is being boring. We don’t want that letter to start with their first name, for example, because that is a snoozefest. Students need to get creative (but not too creative. No acrostic poems or collages). The Letter of Continued Interest should instead 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 bad advice about the Letter of Continued Interest, which means ours should look a little different. That’s how we have the success rates that we have with the students we work with, by not being like everyone else.

When Applicants Should Submit Their Letters of Continued Interest

We like to have students submit their Letter of Continued Interest as soon as possible, ideally within a few days of receiving a deferral. So, if a student hears that 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 will always be if a student is submitting their letter over the day or two leading up to Christmas or between Christmas and New Year’s. Then, we recommend they wait until a few days into the New Year. Give the admissions officers a holiday, too!

And please note that we said wait to submit, not wait to write. Students should not hesitate to draft that Letter of Continued Interest as soon as possible; it’s exactly how we’d encourage them to pivot the rest of their applications before they start to submit to schools for Regular Decision, so it will be a good roadmap.

Chances of Getting into Lafayette College After Being Deferred

Lafayette College does not provide the acceptance stats for students who are admitted after being deferred in either the Early Decision I and Early Decision II round. 

That being said, a pretty universal statistic we’ve found at Ivy Coach is that overall about 10% of deferred candidates ultimately earn admission to the school that kicked the can on their decision. The percentage can certainly vary a bit depending on the year and the school, but it’s a generally consistent threshold.  

That 10% percent jumps up to about 40% for students who come to Ivy Coach after being deferred. 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 students come to work with Ivy Coach first after being deferred, if they play their cards right, they will still have a genuine shot at gaining admission. 

However, we’re also very realistic at Ivy Coach. We tell it like it is, as we mentioned above. Because of this, we cannot take on a student after a deferral unless they fully understand that their chances simply aren’t as strong as when they first applied. All we can do is give them the best possible chance to gain admissions. If quadrupling a student’s chances post-deferral is not enough, best of luck to them moving forward without us!

What To Do After Being Rejected By Lafayette

Considering Lafayette College had an acceptance rate of less than 30% for the Class of 2029, over two thirds of applicants were ultimately rejected. If your child was rejected this year from Lafayette College, they’re not the only student in that boat.

But we’d encourage you and your child not to let that experience with rejection at one school cast a shadow over the rest of the admissions process. As long as a student is willing to fix their initial mistakes and reframe their application narrative the way that we suggest, they’ll have a better chance with the other schools on their Regular Decision list.

Are you and your child ready to move forward and take control of the admission journey? 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 we guide them through the Regular Decision process, ensuring they’re not repeating the mistakes that got them rejected in that Early round application. Our counselors will optimize a student’s case for Regular Decision admissions by crafting a concrete plan to move forward in the elite admissions game.

Getting Started with Ivy Coach After a Lafayette College 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 Lafayette College after 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 admissions assistance process.