<p>
Still, the numbers speak for themselves, and 40% of Penn undergrads do receive financial aid. I would guess that Cornell’s endowed schools have similar percentages.</p>
<p>Also, ED doesn’t really affect the “rankings game” anymore. Yield is not a factor in the US News rankings, and acceptance rate counts for only 1.5% of the total ranking score. </p>
<p>And in terms of the class rank table, the numbers are not supposed to add up. The numbers are the percentages of applicants with those class ranks who were accepted, and not the percentages of all accepted students with those class ranks. In other words, 38% of all valedictorians who applied were accepted (and 62% of all vals who applied were rejected), 31% of all salutatorians who applied were accepted (and 69% of all sals who applied were rejected), 18% of all applicants in the top 5% who weren’t vals or sals were accepted (and 82% of those in the top 5% were rejected), 6% of all applicants in the second 5% were accepted (and 94% of those in the top 5% were rejected), and a total of 19% of all applicants in the top 10% (most of those being vals, sals, and other top 5%) were accepted (and 81% of all applicants in the top 10% were rejected). It’s confusing, but that’s what they’re trying to convey (and what they’re similarly trying to convey in the SAT table, i.e., the percentages of students in each score range who were accepted/rejected).</p>