Well, @Cue7, since your comments yesterday I’ve been thinking about how you square the similarity of process with the apparent low numbers of cross-admits in the HYPMS admissions “system”. Here’s my very rough description of what I think is going on, using made-up (but I believe plausible) numbers - please correct me if you disagree.
The population that applies to HYPSM each year consists of, I’m going to guess, something around 125,000 unique applicants, competing for something over 9,000 total offers of admission, with total freshman enrollment at the five schools of something over 7,000 (i.e., there are about 2,000 cross-admits across the five schools). I’ll guess that half of the applicants are unqualified and are denied on first reading. Then let’s say that across the five schools 850 of the slots go to recruited athletes and a similar number go to legacies. I’ll assume that one in five of these gets one cross-admit to another school in the group (bearing in mind that although the athletes are talented, they’re mostly recruited early and often don’t apply to more than one of HYPMS, and although the legacies may be high-quality, the hook only works in one place). I’ll assume 2,400 other HYPSM legacies are denied at their legacy school as well as all the other four. So now we’re at 58,400 remaining applicants for 7,960 remaining offers.
Bear with me at this point - I’m going to allude to race, but I believe my points are noncontroversial, and I apologize if I inadvertently offend anyone. I’m not aiming to provoke a discussion about race in college admissions, or to opine about what colleges should be doing in this area, so I hope no one will go there.
I estimate there are about 1,200 URM matriculants among HYPSM in each year. The population of URMs that test in the top 1% of their racial group is, I estimate, a few thousand. I believe a large number of these academically elite URMs who apply to any of HYPSM will get an offer, and that they are very likely to be cross-admitted. Let’s say 600 of the academically tippy-top URMs apply to at least one of HYPSM and get 1.5 offers each on average. The remainder of the admitted URMs overlap with other groups described herein. This takes us to something like 57,800 remaining applicants for 7,060 remaining offers.
Now to the ORMs. Of the ~125,000 unique applicants to HYPSM, I’m going to assume that 21,500 are either Asian-American or international (principally Asian), since that number is roughly equivalent to the top 10% of Asian-American high school seniors (somewhat less than that number will apply, and I’m assuming it gets made up by internationals). Let’s say roughly 1,500 will ultimately matriculate across HYPSM, and that they’ll get 1.25 HYPSM offers each on average (i.e., one in four gets two offers, the rest get one). The other 19,000 are denied. That brings us down to 37,300 applicants for 5,185 remaining offers.
Let’s say each school has 50 (for a total of 250) miscellaneous other “institutional priorities” on average (development case, celebrity or celebrity offspring, from the 50th state, faculty brat, child of a foreign government official, very strong in some sport that doesn’t get a recruit spot, contrabassoon virtuoso, Broadway performer, published author or other unique talent, etc.) and they get 1.5 offers each on average - now we’re at 37,050 applicants for 4,810 remaining offers.
Assume 300 unquestionable geniuses, who get 2 HYPSM offers each on average - we’re now down to 36,750 applicants for 4,210 remaining offers.
I’m going to guess most of the desired number of first-gens at each school has been reached via overlap with the athletes, URMs and other institutional priorities groups, but let’s assume another 500 across the five schools are admitted (e.g., through QuestBridge) and get 1.2 admits each on average. Now we’re at 36,250 applicants for 3,610 remaining offers
At this point, we get to everyone else and individual results become much less predictable - did the rest of your package, i.e., your essays, recommendations, etc., speak to the adcoms in the right way? Did you convince them that you and the school are a perfect match? Some of the best unhooked or weaker-hooked kids may have lightning strike in more than one place, because they have an unusual story. I think 2,600 students or so divide those 3,610 remaining offers; the other 33,650 are denied.
So, let’s check the math: 125,000 applicants, less 62,500 denied for being unqualified, less 2,400 denied legacies, less 19,000 denied ORMs/internationals, less 33,650 others denied equals 7,450 HYPSM matriculants - pretty close to the aggregate number of 7,217 posited by @spayurpets in last year’s compilation of admissions data.
The numbers also add up to 2,060 cross-admits among the HYPSM schools. Since there are 10 possible two-school cross-admit pairs, this means that there are just over 200 cross-admitted students on average for each two-school pair, which seems in line with the Stanford faculty senate numbers. Bear in mind that each school hands out about 2,000 admits, so the cross-admit percentage is roughly 10% with any other school.
Yes, I know this is a gross oversimplification and people will have differing opinions as to the size and composition of the groups, but I don’t think it’s a million miles from the truth. One can see how these schools could have processes that are more similar than different, but that the aggregate number of cross-admits could still be pretty small. This is, in my opinion, because large percentages of cross-admits tend to be found in groups that have small numbers (e.g., elite URMs, institutional priorities and unquestionable geniuses, all of whom are rare and highly-prized), while for the larger groups (e.g., ORMs/internationals and the unhooked), chances are that different (albeit possibly overlapping) subsets will be admitted at each of HYPSM because the large numbers make individual admits less predictable.