In answer to @pfdgjb , I think if you look at ED as one piece of a general strategy of yield control, then, eliminating it or severely limiting its effectiveness, would seem to put extra pressure on the other piece - “the back end”, as it were - which would be the waitlist. Of the two, WL is the least efficient since it occurs so late in the process. The question is, should the Adcom over-admit, in the hopes of capturing as many top students as possible during RD or should they under-admit, and protect their yield?
The former would shred their yield since in a protracted RD process, and in accord with the Atlantic article, the top NE colleges would be far more prone to overlap with HYP (and, Brown in the case of Wesleyan) than they would even with each other. Nevertheless, once the air was cleared, there would be no need for a waitlist.
OTOH, under-admitting would cause Wesleyan and other small colleges to swell their WL, if maintaining their yield were deemed a top priority. At the moment, Wesleyan has a yield in the mid to high 30s, perhaps a reflection of the enormous degree of overlap it has with bigger and better known research universities. So, it’s not an easy question to answer.
Others are welcome to chime in.