Not necessarily. The very top institutions are now so far ahead of everyone else in terms of the amount of resources per student, that their desirability is only increasing.
In other words there is an even larger gap every year in terms of the quality you now see at the very top (HYP/MIT/Caltech) and the quality you see everywhere else (the rest of the top 20). Yale and Princeton are now the leaders, with about $2,000,000 per student EACH in endowment, with Harvard close behind at about $1,500,000 per student. FYI, most of the "top 20" is in the $300,000 per student range, although a half dozen or so of the very top LACs are getting up close to the HYP league.
That means things like: free tuition, room and board for anyone who can't pay, fully funded trips to anywhere in the world every summer, one on one tutoring services, cushy $14 per hour campus jobs for those who want them, unlimited grants, smaller and smaller class sizes, unlimited research opportunities, funding available for anything anyone could possibly ever want to do or create an organization for while in college, simply unparalleled advising, fellowship services (Rhodes etc) and career services, summer job programs, paid salaries if you work for local nonprofits, palace like dormitories, early admission to top grad programs, and better dining hall food than anyone else (Yale even now has its own organic farm on campus, see
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200410/kummer.)
As long as endowment per student continues to skyrocket at the very top, admissions rates to HYP will just continue to decline. I know it's not popular for me to say this, but it's true.
The good news is that admissions is as unpredictable as ever, so don't be deterred by the low numbers. Apply to your top choice- don't settle for second best. Ignore the statistics and concentrate on putting together a kick-$$$ app.
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