<p>“Looking at anecdotal evidence and other cross admit data i.e. official data from colleges themselves…”</p>
<p>This is pretty sufficient evidence of how much of a tool you are. Anybody making the statement “Looking at the anecdotal evidence…” needs to be looked at very suspiciously. At least, that’s what we do at Chicago. Not sure about Duke. Also, colleges very rarely self-report cross-admit data. With regard to public schools, there’s a reason why public schools tend to perform well against elites: they’re MUCH cheaper. So I completely believe that UWash wins 1/3 of its (probably few) cross-admits against the Ivies.</p>
<p>The reason that Duke competes as well as Stanford with Chicago cross-admits is obvious to any keen observer: some students hedge their bets by applying ED to Duke and EA to Chicago, thereby forcing students to go to Duke when admitted to both. With Stanford being SCEA, this scenario does not exist with Chicago. Same goes for Cornell, Penn, and Columbia, who all perform relatively well against Chicago in comparison to Princeton, Stanford, MIT, and Caltech. When students actually have a chance to choose between schools and they’re not just hedging their bets, it’s likely that they’re choosing Chicago against Duke/Cornell 2/3 of the time and choosing Chicago against Columbia/Penn 1/2 of the time. </p>
<p>This is just simple math, so I don’t know why you’re arguing. Chicago seems to be performing head-to-head with the very top schools in the nation. The only people stunned by these results are the Duke supporters who seem to be perplexed by Chicago’s sudden rise and angry that Duke hasn’t seen similar success in admission. And once again, the only argument seems to be “you can’t rely on self-reported data” without giving any reason why this would give any benefit to Chicago, esp. a widespread benefit in which Chicago is performing better-than-anticipated head-to-head against practically every single school.</p>