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<p>As implied above, you are confusing acceptance rate with yield. All schools accept more than they end up getting, even Harvard. In Harvard’s case their yield is about 87% or something like that, so they only admit a small number more than their desired class size. For most schools, say like Vanderbilt, their yield is probably about 1/3, so for a class of 1,500 they would admit about 4,500 out of maybe 18,000 applications knowing that about 1,500 will enroll. If they have a weird year and get a higher yield, they have a big class and can have dorm crowding problems. If it is a poor year and the yield is like 25%, they will have a small class and revenue will suffer. Frankly I don’t know how these schools get so close to the mark they desire so often, but they do. Of course the more desirable the school, the easier it is because they can use the waitlist.</p>