“Our kids BS two thousand miles away looks the same as one for a NE school! Do they all hire the same company?”
They might! A whole lot of them use the same company for their websites.
“We read the bio’s on the faculty and review the school’s stats on their faculty. Where did faculty go to school?”
I think that a lot of the tire kicking you describe is a great thing to do. I wouldn’t necessarily get too caught up in this one though. From my personal experience, some of the best teachers my kids have had are ones that went to more humble, less lofty institutions themselves. I didn’t really see a correlation between colleges faculty attended and teaching quality.
As far as competition amongst one’s peers when applying to colleges ED, it’s not unusual for even small LACs that are popular to easily get 7-10 ED applications from one prep school and, most definitely, not even half are likely to be accepted ED.