<p>I think that John Adams is right about the Harvard Princeton Yale stats being more like 10 to 90 for a couple reasons. As stated above, I think that Notre Dame, for many students, is by far their first choice. These students (often legacies) would never dream of picking anything over ND and therefore don’t even bother applying to HYP and other ivies even though it’s highly likely that some of these schools might accept them.</p>
<p>The other group of ND applicants includes those who apply to ND because its a “good school.” Not because ND was their childhood dream or because they spend each saturday watching ND football, but because ND is in the top 20 on US News and World Report and has a highly-ranked business school. These are the students who apply to multiple other ivies and will invariably take HYPCD over ND in a heartbeat because, after all, HYPCD are just “better” (sarcasm). </p>
<p>So I think that many kids do prefer ND over schools like Harvard and Yale; so much so that they don’t even apply to the upper ivies. The kids admitted to ND who get into HYP are primarily kids who are looking to go to the “best” school and will easily turn it down for a spot at the top of the Ivy League. (Hence the very low cross admit stats)</p>