<p>Stanford did experience a surge in applications (over 30,000), and I’m willing to bet that many of those extra applications were probably sent just for the heck of it (i.e. there were people at my school who weren’t qualified but applied to these colleges anyway). But, I don’t see why it matters too terribly much - they all accept about 2150 applicants, don’t they (well, I believe that HYP do, at least)? So if they’re all accepting the same amount of equally qualified students, do the admit rates matter that much? I mean, the difference between 9.5% and 7.5% isn’t that much, is it?</p>