<p>Books could be cooked. However, in many such cases, not that many may be cross-admitted, and in the cases of MIT and Caltech, it’s possible that those who matriculated WashU instead are the types that perhaps fear the rigor of those two (I can imagine a pre-health or something who somehow gets cross-admitted getting cold feet about MIT or Caltech) I would also keep in mind that their may not be as many students cross-applying to WashU and some of these schools in the first place which again, suggests that some that even cross-apply are perhaps the “special” types. There is also the fact that many other schools compete against them that fall outside of those that may be more attractive than WashU to many students today. Duke and Vanderbilt come to mind (the more pure “work hard play hard” reputation schools). Correlating these data to their overall yield implies that you think these are basically their only competition (and that tons of WashU students are also getting into Stanford or Harvard for that matter). I would need to know how many cross-admits there were between each pair to pass any real judgement. I just suspect it’s not as big as they would like it to be. It’s extremely selective, but not really the level of some of those places and typically attracts completely different types to apply in the first place. Again Caltch and WashU should not have much overlap. </p>