Grand larceny and shoplifting are all designed to steal stuff. sorry when you put in shoplifting you are stealing stuff. Grand larceny does it better. So what?
Every Ivy could produce the same stats profile if they took >80% of their classes ED and shaped their classes accordingly - there are plenty of high-stats kids to go around. And “better classes” isn’t synonymous with higher-stats.
Until and unless the tippy-tops introduce ED - which they won’t because it would hurt their ability to get the best classes (even though it would make them look far more selective than UChicago).
Smaller endowment and relative lack of funding are probably a major reason for the excessive use of ED, coupled with overadmitting, since you’d expect those things to bring lots of full payers.
About 200 athletic recruits per year at each Ivy (which compete nationally in some sports), close to twice as many varsity teams as UChicago and D1 at the Ivies vs. D3 at UChicago - it matters, I’m afraid.