<p>If a hypothetical college succeeds in greatly reducing its fifth-year seniors and thus enrolls a freshman class of 12,000 students instead of its previous 10,000, then will these 2,000 new students be of the same quality as the other 10,000? </p>
<p>My assumption is that they are a lesser quality, whether compared to the class as a whole, or even compared just to the fifth-year seniors that they replaced. If they were of the same quality, then why were they rejected when considered for the smaller pool? They might well be similar in credentials, but there was something in their applications that cause the adcoms to reject them, but accept students who would end up being fifth-years.</p>