<p>It should be noted that Harvard use of its waitlist was absolutely … legitimate. The combination of dropping their early admissions, the need to manage the possible overcrowding, and not knowing the true impact of its new financial aid policies all lead to the wise decision to under-admit. </p>
<p>Gaming its admission statistics must have been the last thing on their mind because the TOTAL and CORRECTED admission number will still be the LOWEST in the country, and would have been had they accepted more students in April. </p>
<p>This is not the same at schools that rely on not only ED admissions but also an extensive wait list enrollment. </p>
<p>In so many words, the situation at Penn and Duke has very little commonality with Harvard, Princeton, or even Stanford. The issue here is to ascertain how credible a claim could be that the extensive use of a waitlist enrollment at Duke (or Penn) was prompted by a domino effect from HP that is DIFFERENT from prior years. </p>
<p>In my opinion, pretending that Duke’s entire 200 waitlisted/enrolled is a direct result of the wait list movements at Harvard or Princeton is pure fiction. I think that 20-25% (or 40-50) of such students would be quite a generous estimate. The rest can be tracked to overly optmistic admit and yield rates.</p>