<p>Harvard isn’t really more difficult to get into than Yale. It all depends on whether you happen to be what that school is looking for that particular year. You clear the bar of being well-qualified–after that, it comes down to some intangibles and things out of your control, so you may as well give it a shot. They don’t offer an undergraduate drama concentration, so productions are open to everyone. It’s all extra-curricular, basically. Which I think encourages lots of people to just jump in. Every house has a drama society. There are multiple performance spaces and people also put shows on places you wouldn’t consider performance spaces. </p>
<p>(FWIW, Brandeis has more or less done away with merit aid.)</p>