Deferring a year?

[desperate4cal]

Hey guys

So I was wondering how common it is to defer one's entrance for a year after accepting an offer(I'm in bioengineering); I know that people have in the past, but I guess I'm wondering if any of you had a hard time/or was told to just reapply next year, which would be so much pain and money.

I've been thinking about doing random things before I go to grad school relatively recently, but seeing that I might be doing totally random things-not great on resume-I decided to apply this past fall anyway. But now that decisions are coming out, I'm seriously thinking about how to go about this. Should I discuss this before accepting an offer or after?

Hope you guys are hearing lots of good news!

[was1984]

You should have a very good reason to defer any offer of acceptance. You applied this year and were accepted for this year. In engineering an acceptance implies that your advisor needs a student this year, not next year, and you may upset some people by deferring without a very good reason. Funding and research opportunities within a research group are very fluid, so there is no guarantee that your potential advisor will have the same situation next year.

[Vacuum]

If you are deferring, you defer before accepting. Some programs don't accept deferrals and that might be stated on their website. If you have already accepted, but now want to defer, that doesn't exist (as far as I know). You would just be pulling out and therefore rejecting the offer all together.

Usually if you defer, you submit a reason as to why you are deferring. This then goes to a committee that either decides that your reasoning is valid and they will grant you a deferral OR your reasoning is not good enough and they decline your deferral. If they decline, then obviously you need to accept or just decline the offer. If they accept your deferral, they usually send out a new acceptance for the following year and you then have the chance to accept that new offer or decline by a deadline that is usually in the Fall of that next year.

Seriously think about your program and the reasoning behind you wanting to defer. How easy will it be to get in again? will standards go up? will a lot more people apply in upcoming years? were you lucky to get in this time? etc.

[a fragrant plant]

Last year I deferred an alright programme to the year of 2011 because they did not offer me any funding. This year I applied to 5 schools and have been accepted to some of the best universities out there.

If you're unsure, don't go (especially if you applied to PhD programmes)!