<p>Well one has to understand that cornell already has the highest applicant pool among all the top tier universities in the US, including all ivy-leagues and duke, mit, stanford. this year it had 36700 in the RD pool itself…that is HUGE! With such a big pool even last year, it is no surprise that the pool grew by less than a percent this year, simply because it is ALREADY so big. On the other hand, I dont think sucide rates would cause any change to a university pool. For one thing, unlike the other ivy-leagues, Cornell choses to be transparent about the sucides, whereas the other unviersities chose to keep their students’ confidentiality. On ther other hand, Yale had a murder in 2009! but that doesn’t undermine its value as one of the top-notch institutions in the world.</p>