For the general public, it may be the “oh, you must be so smart to get into [college name]” that is more of a reputation builder. Yes, it is a virtuous (for those colleges) cycle, where the reputation increases applications, which allows them to select an ever more elite incoming class* to increase that reputation.
*Including raising standards for the “hook” applicants, even if they may still be held to lower standards than other applicants.
I still think the last few weeks of SCOTUS discussion and where they all went to law school has a bigger impact on the general population than the undergraduate admissions that is happening now.
I think the author is saying that. In addition they are saying the importance of freshmen to the overall financial health of the institutions is low in the lower half of the chart.
I don’t know that they are inferring this, but it seems as though they are saying the graduate programs are what is important to these institutions and that may translate into a lesser experience for undergrads. Yet, based on reputation of the graduate schools, they get tons of applications for undergrad. Which, doesn’t seem to make sense.
It’s probably a lot to infer based on that single chart, but I’ve long held that reputations, and thus inadvertently selectivity, do not correlate to the undergraduate experience.