"On Dec. 12, the College’s early decision admissions cycle concluded, with a total of 547 students receiving offers to matriculate as part of the Class of 2024 — an acceptance rate of 26.4 percent.
This year, 2,069 students applied, according to vice provost for enrollment and dean of admissions and financial aid Lee Coffin. That number marks a decrease from both last year’s record high of 2,474 applicants and the 2,270 applicants from two years ago — the first year the College received over 2,000 ED applicants.
Coffin said that he attributes the decrease in ED applicants to several factors, including this year’s college admissions scandal and an overall decrease in the international applicants pool. There was a significant decrease in applicants from Asia, China in particular. Coffin said that peer institutions also experienced an overall contraction in early decision applicants this year, mirroring the changes in Dartmouth’s application pool. " …
Well Brown is a different case – they are moving towards replacing loans with scholarship funds, which obviously increased applicants. That’s the underlying cause. It is likely they too would hav had a decrease if not for this new factor working in their favor, occurring side by side with that. It is probable that they received less applicants than they would have if not for virus and application contraction this year.
That is not to say other ivies don’t have similar scholarship programs, but this is not a new thing at those schools so they already have experience whatever proportion of application increases that come with that. Thus the decreases are more visible.
Penn, for example also suffered a significant decrease in applicants, of 9%. Harvard saw a 7% decrease. Most of the others as well, as far as I know. Be careful not to take a single statistic at face value – there are likely underlying factors that determine it, especially if it is in isolation compared to a much larger trend.