I know two people from my year who both turned down Exeter and now go to a HYPSM school, so don’t worry about matriculation!
I had to interact with him a lot as a result of my student leadership positions, and I felt that there was a lot of CYA mentality in what he was often telling me. He is very nice and knows a lot of our names, but when bad things have happened, I have not really appreciated his responses.