Jonathan Cohen for The New York Times  Cornell University told Evi Nam it would admit her only if she attended another college first.  For as long as there have been selective colleges, the spring ritual has been the same: Some applicants get a warm note of acceptance, and the rest get a curt rejection.  Now, as colleges are increasingly swamped with applications, a small but growing number are offering a third option: guaranteed admission if the student attends another institution for a year or two and earns a prescribed grade-point average.  This little-noticed practice — an unusual mix of early admission and delayed gratification — has allowed colleges to tap their growing pools of eager candidates to help counter the enrollment slump that most institutions suffer later on, as the accepted students drop out, transfer, study abroad or take internships off campus.  “Life happens — we all understand that the size of the freshman class diminishes as they progress,” said Barmak Nassirian, an associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers in Washington. “This is an attempt at what is called enrollment management.”  But while the practice, known as deferred admission or a guaranteed transfer option, offers applicants another shot at their dream school, it can also place them in limbo, as they start college life on a campus they plan to abandon. And it can create problems for that institution, which is not usually told about the deal the student has struck with a competitor.  Monica Inzer, the dean of admission at Hamilton College in upstate New York, called the practice “borderline unethical,” saying it had the effect of recruiting students from other colleges. “We would allow a student to defer for a year, but never to matriculate full time at another college,” Ms. Inzer said.  No one tracks how many colleges use this admissions option, and some are reluctant to reveal that they do. In New York State, they include Cornell University, Medaille College in Buffalo and several campuses in the State University of New York system, including the ones in Albany and Geneseo. Many others around the country, like the University of Maryland and Middlebury College in Vermont, have long had variations on the practice, accepting students if they agree to start a semester later.  Though deferred admission is not entirely new, admissions officers say the number of colleges offering it has increased in recent years, and they expect that to continue as baby boomers’ children, who created their own demographic bulge, move into adulthood.  “Throughout the Northeast in particular, the number of traditional freshmen will continue to go down, so schools that aren’t already doing something like this are talking about it,” said Gregroy P. Florczak, vice president for enrollment management and undergraduate admissions at Medaille. “You’re going to need to pick up in transfers what you are losing in incoming freshmen.”  Some admissions officers suggested in interviews that deferred admission had also provided an edge in college rankings. Because the rankings are based in part on the SAT scores and high school grade-point averages of freshmen entering in the fall, the scores — presumably lower — of students who are to begin later are not included. Deferring the admission of some students also lowers the college’s admissions rate, making it appear more selective.  William Caren, associate vice president for enrollment services at SUNY Geneseo, said the effect on rankings was not a motivation for his campus’s offering deferred admission, but “a collateral benefit.”  Each college with deferred admissions does them a little differently. Usually, the offers are put in writing, and prospective students are asked to submit a form demonstrating interest. But while the college promises delayed admission, students are typically not required to commit themselves or pay a deposit. Colleges often provide academic advisers to help students choose compatible courses at the institution they will attend first.  Such arrangements are different from the traditional “articulation agreements” that four-year public colleges make with community colleges. In those, the institutions work together to ensure the smooth transferring of credits.  When Evi Nam applied to Cornell two years ago after graduating from high school in Concord, N.H., the first word she got from the university’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations was a rejection. “I was heartbroken,” she said.
Some colleges admit weaker applicants on condition that they first attend another school and get good grades there.