Search the Community

Hi everyone, I am going to be applying in the next months for admission in August/September 2019. I will be applying to the top 10/15 plus corresponding business schools as applicable. I am worried about my partner's (we are not yet married) chances of getting a US work visa. Especially in the next 10 months. Deferring admission for a year might be useful to give extra time for her to try get a visa, or for us to get married so she can come on a J2 visa. My questions are these: Will departments generally find the above to be an acceptable reason to defer admission for a year? Some are quite vague and seem to indicate its possible, whereas some (e.g. Stanford) make it clear that deferrals are very rare. If a deferral is possible, will the funding offer also be valid the following year, or will I have to re-apply for that somehow? If funding needs to be re-applied for, is there much risk that it will be substantially less after the deferred year? If answers are department dependent, please note I am applying to top 10/15 programs. Thanks very much.

Hi all! Second time poster, long time casual reader. I was wondering if anyone had any experience or insight about deferring admission for Berkeley Econ. I would love to apply both to both the Econ and the ARE department, as they are both at the top of my list, but as you may know an applicant can only apply to one of those two programs at a time. I'm quite enjoying my current RA job, and wouldn't mind another year here, so I'm considering doing the following: apply to Berkeley Econ this year, and accept and defer if I get in; if I don't, then apply to Berkeley ARE along with other schools next year. That way I can go to Berkeley Econ (my preference) if I get in, and if I'm considered a strong enough applicant for ARE but not Econ then I could have a chance at that as well. I'm waiting to hear back from the department about their deferral procedures. I guess I have three questions, assuming that deferral is possible: 1) What my level of commitment would be after accepting with deferral 2) My understanding is that schools that allow deferral typically re-evaluate your financial offer the next year. That seems totally reasonable to me - is there any reason to fear such a thing? 3) Are there any other obvious considerations here that I'm missing?