<p>I think they have yield in mind, but I’m beginning to wonder about my first theory. Though CC provides a poor sample, if the rest of the finalists are similar in caliber to the few that reported their stats. here, then they essentially chose perfect students. If you’re Emory, you don’t choose near perfect students for yield protection (you let up some). However, they may be choosing the perfect students that they view as being possible to “win over” with a scholarship offer and a campus visit/more familiarity with the institution. In addition, if it is very uniform, then the finalist pool is probably statistically more selective than previous years (beginning to look more like the selectivity of top scholarship and fellows programs at highly and moderately selective public schools. Those places are very picky with the stats and many will flat out auto-admit high stats students to the normal honors program without the student applying or displaying interest in that particuar program). I think usually the mean/median of scholars finalists are at the 75% of admitted students, but this time it appears it may be well above it (maybe 30-50 points on the SAT and 1-2 on the ACT). Then again, we dont know how the RD pool will work out. They may become more selective with it as well (as in, even if you exclude the effect of the denied scholars applicants who will no doubt, for the most part, be admitted). </p>