<p>OK. I can believe the statistics reported and perhaps I am overestimating the number of schools applied and accepted to. But, are we operating on the honor system? I can imagine that an admissions office might be tempted to not include legacy students in the admission rates and consider these separately. Or perhaps when going through the wait-list, a student that would be admitted that declines the offer might not be counted as an eventual acceptance, thereby artificially inflating the yield. Just saying…How do we know the true number of applicants and the true number of acceptances? I think that there are many opportunities to game the system to create an impression of selectivity. </p>
<p>I think that a lot of kids applying to Exeter also applied to Andover and some got into both. There are a lot of kids that apply to many schools for the purpose of weighing different FA packages. </p>
<p>The issue is not that important because, in the end, an individual’s acceptance or rejection speaks for itself and parents/kids can be pleasantly surprised. Just seems like a lot of people on this site are pleasantly surprised and the stats don’t match up (by a lot).</p>