<p>My point was primarily that the numbers on a lot of these rejections and waitlists are far from auto-admit stats. Schools dealing with this many applicants will have indexes to create pools of students that are shoo-ins, ice-cube-chance-in-hell, and so on. Only a small portion of the applicant pool will ever get that comprehensive evaluation where the personal statement plays a significant role in rendering a decision. I read through a public disclosure report by Cal admissions a few years ago and their holistic system operates almost exactly this way. </p>
<p>There will always be weirdness in that borderline pool of candidates, so I definitely agree that the personal statement can play a significant role for this band of students within the index. Regardless, I’m with you guys in the the numbers-tell-an-incomplete-story wagon. I’m just not convinced undergraduate admissions departments dealing with tens of thousands of applications are doing any sort of yield protecting on big number candidates due to weak softs. It would be far too hard to separate the ‘unlikely to matriculate’ from possible Regents scholar attendee, and the potential yield boost is minuscule.</p>