<p>What Marilee said isn’t wrong of most schools, actually; there are very specific tricks, like joining the common app, or so-called “FastApps” (where you mail out pre-filled applications to highly qualified students and tell them if they just return them they’ll have applied), and so forth to get your app numbers up → keep your admit numbers steady → drive your admit rate down → ??? → become prestigious. But that’s not true of us.</p>