<p>I think if you look at public universities in the Northeast now, the last thing you will notice is discrimination against OOS applicants. It’s more like very active marketing to them! For precisely the reason bclintonk gives.</p>
<p>Acceptance rate is a function of two things, and two things only:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>How many applicants does it get for each slot it has to fill?</p></li>
<li><p>How likely is each accepted applicant to matriculate?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>If college “H” gets 20 applications for each slot available, and every applicant accepted is certain to matriculate, College H is going to accept 5% of its applicants, and no more.</p>
<p>Harvard is not quite so bad as College H. It only gets about 17 applications per slot, and its acceptees are only 80% likely to enroll. So it accepts a little more than 7% of its applicants.</p>
<p>If College X got 10 applications/slot, but accepted students were only 10% likely to enroll, College X would have just about a 100% admission rate.</p>