<p>@vivian_ --Yes, but the United States is NOT England. It has a much bigger student population and, consequently, has many more than 2 schools at the top. If you truly believe that H & S are the only schools that should by compared to oxbridge, I’m not quite sure what I can say. Yale, Princeton, MIT, and, probably, Caltech are in that same exact category. As I said before, by virtue of endowments alone, Yale and Princeton have the capability of bolstering their own, and one day rivaling, Stanford’s STEM departments (in fact, I believe that Princeton is already pretty close). Yale’s even looking to expand into asia, see Yale-NUS (yes, this is controversial, but who knows? Our world’s trend of hyper-globalization is only going to continue onward, so Yale might just be on to something here). In fact, Stanford was recently looking to expand into NYC, but Cornell ultimately got the grant (yes, I know that it was more complicated than this, but the point still stands). I just don’t buy the H & S claim.</p>
<p>Now, as for yield, I completely agree. That’s why harvard accepted 21% of its SCEA applicants in 2013. </p>