<p>Just to address the question of what happens when it reaches 100,000 applicants:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I don’t think it will ever reach this point. As the admission rate drops lower and lower, people will be increasingly discouraged.</p></li>
<li><p>If it did reach this point, the vast majority of people applying will probably be considered “academically unqualified”. For simplicity, lets break down the applicant pool into 4 groups.
a) People who have a very high chance of getting into harvard (very good scores, very good grades, cured cancer/IMO Gold Medalist/best selling author/whatever, if not harvard some other YPMS),
b) people who have a decent chance of getting into harvard (good scores, good grades, other interesting and cool aspects, if they don’t get into harvard they will probably get into a peer institution or something similar (top 15)),
c) people who are have a very small chance of getting in (decent grades/scores, maybe some interesting aspect, probably get into a decently competitive school (top 75)),
d) people who have asymptotically close to zero percent chance (people who have generally poor grades, poor scores, generally no other redeeming factor, etc).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Now, I am willing to wager probably (+/- 15%) 90% of type a people are already applying to Harvard (or have made the decision not to), probably 70% of type b people are already applying (or have made the decision not to), and maybe 40% of type c people are already applying (or have made the decision not to), and some small fraction of type d people (“i applied to harvard just for the hell of it” type people) are doing a similarly.</p>
<p>So the only read place you will be getting these additional 68,000 (100,000-32,000) students are type c or d people, which generally don’t have too high of a shot at admissions. So even if the official admission rate drops down to 3%,2% or 1%, the stereotypical College Confidential applicant (meaning the majority people who are posting “what are my chances” everywhere on this site) would probably be considered a b applicant and their chances won’t be radically changed from what ever the current acceptance rate is.</p>