<p>Byerly: If you are going to post threads touting Harvard's "name brand" appeal, you have to be prepared for people to begin questioning the motives of those who choose Harvard over other elite institutions. </p>
<p>While the oft-repeated 75 % rate may appear overwhelming, you have to consider how small a pool of cross-admits we are dealing with. According the 2005 US News and World Report, Princeton, for example, admitted 1601 applicants to fill a class of somewhere between 1150-1200 students. There is no solid evidence that these 400 + students who chose to attend another school were the "best" applicants, or that the majority of them went to Harvard. Some of them likely chose scholarships at state schools, top LACs, other Ivies, or even (gasp!) Yale, Stanford, or MIT, begging the question of how many cross admits Princeton and Harvard have in a given year.</p>
<p>Byerly implies that the cross-admits are the "best" students simply because they are the most sought after. This is not necessarily a logical assumption. An URM or athelete with a high rank and scores from the mid 1400s and up on the old SAT would have a good chance of being accepted at almost any school to which he applied. While such students are certainly qualified for admission at any one of the top schools, only their status as a member of a particularly sought after group distinguishes them from any other aceptee. A similar standard might also apply, to a lesser extent, to other groups, for example, residents of underrepresented states or female engineering majors. So, when you come down to it, how many of these cross admits are actually the "genius" students? Do they fall into the 75 % choosing Harvard, the 25 % choosing Princeton, Yale, MIT, and Stanford, or somewhere in between?</p>