True. But the biggest structural underpinnings are the two facts that 1) Wes is easier to get into and 2) Wes is significantly larger than the other top LACs. Many more applicants realistically view it as a possibility for them to gain admission to Wes in comparison to, say, the other two members of the Little Three. So they get more applications.
That doesn’t translate into a popularity contest because under that logic you also would have to say that BU is more “popular” than Stanford because it gets more applications…even though we all know that 99 percent of the students at BU would transfer to Stanford in a flash if they could.
Look, I don’t want it to start to seem like I’m trying to knock Wes or compare it unfavorably to other schools, so I’m going to let it go. I just don’t think this stat means what you think it means.