<p>i agree on many students "are in fact interested in dartmouth and brown" because i met many many of them during penn's preview
but i disagree about the deliberation of rejecting the very top of the pool because i met an extremendous portion of kids who were accepted by HYP. since u said penn's waitlisting pool is the biggest among ivy then y would they risk to reject HYP acceptees........btw...many many ppl turned down HYP for Wharton so many that i was shocked for awhile.</p>
<p>"penn also deliberately rejects applicants at the very top of the pool"</p>
<p>Just curious, but where did you get this information? Anyone from Penn? I can understand the logic, but for some reason I doubt any admissions official would reveal this.</p>
<p>Most of his statements are inaccurate.</p>
<p>Penn used to aggressively track cross admit preferences. The data is actually useful in determining what kids are thinking and why they are making choices. It's helpful in designing an attractive and competitive curriculum.</p>
<p>They used to do a sampling by having kids who visit during Penn previews fill out a small survey card. Whether this has been done the last couple years is something I don't know. If anything I would guess that the cross admit trends have improved for Penn the past two years as the yield has bumped up. My data is stale by a few years. All surveys have a self select bias. They are produced by the makeup of the kids that actually take the time to fill the cards out. That's true about each school's sampling and any preference data that is collected. The data is helpful in a directional sense, but nothing more. </p>
<p>As for the waitlist it's long this year. That's because a) the yield has jumped up in the past few years and broken out of historical ranges. Therefore they are not 100% sure what to expect and b) they were oversubscribed last year and didn't want to risk the same because of housing issues. Penn's waitlist has historically been very short. This year it is very different from past years.</p>
<p>The stuff about purposely turning down kids is utter nonsense. That should be obvious.</p>
<p>Lastly the yield trend isn't driven by ED trends. Penn has historically taken 45/46% of its class ED. Princeton has normally been about the same or higher. Columbia has been lower but not by more than a couple % points. Yale's used to be lower by about 5% before they switched systems. Cornell and Dartmouth are significantly lower, but the ratio of ED apps to class places is much lower at those two schools. Lastly Brown is in the process of normalizing after switching from the Harvard system and, of course, Harvard is out there alone because they tend to hold the best hand and the most chips in this "poker game".</p>
<p>Penn gets creamed by Harvard and MIT. That's a fact. Our engineering school carries a higher admit rate and a lower yield than Wharton or A&S. MIT not only has great engineering but it has programs that compete very well with M&T. </p>
<p>And - we get beat by Yale. Princeton and Stanford but to a much lesser extent. We also lose many students to non Ivies for various reasons, primarily financial and geographical.</p>