<p>@Saachi "Still, some theories as to why Wash U would have higher cross admit success than you might expect.</p>
<p>Merit scholarships is an obvious one. Wash U gives more merit awards than peer colleges with similar rankings, and a good merit award may sway an admitted student."</p>
<p>Yes, that is possible, but it just does not add up to me. The yield of 33% includes ED applicants. That means that they must only get about 20%? of their regular decision admits to enroll. If they are only getting 1 in 5 overall, it is hard to believe that the 1 is a cross admit from Stanford, Penn, Harvard, or MIT. They get that 1 and then are turned down by 4 kids who picked Saint Louis University, or Missouri? That is hard to believe.</p>
<p>I think that these cross admit numbers must be overstated. Harvard and Stanford are around an 80% yield. I have to think that they lose students mainly to each other, Yale, MIT, and Princeton, and occasionally to Columbia or Penn. They certainly could lose an occasional student to Wash U, but I doubt that they lose very many. There is just no way that Wash U can win head to head against those schools and not have a yield that is double their 33.6% actual yield.</p>
<p>I don’t know why, but the number have to be overstated.</p>