bsklman
CobraKai
Not only the best, but they also get the MOST (i.e. cannon fodder). To me it's amazing how many people apply to Harvard like they're throwing cooked pasta at the wall and hoping it will stick. I get the feeling a fair amount of people apply as a total reach and haven't really done all that much research, they just figure it's like the lottery: You can't win if you don't play...and if by some miracle they get accepted, well, you can't say "no" to Harvard, right? Harvard's acceptance rate would be a lot less intimidating if you removed the applications that got read once and were immediately discarded.
9000 applications a year is mind boggling, especially when you consider that Wharton only attracts about 6400 applicants for a class of similar size. Stanford wins the "most selective" prize because about 6600 applicants are vying for 400 seats.
The pasta on the wall point is a really good one -
BUT the truth is that a more competitive set is applying to Harvard. They may just read once and throw out the ones that Michigan takes seriously.
Agree that Harvard has the strongest applicant pool, but the fact that the size is 9,000 (with no other school breaking 7,000) suggests that Harvard's strong brand name draws more "Why the hell not?" applicants than other top schools.
I already mentioned Wharton and Stanford's numbers, so to illustrate further, last year Booth had ~4,000 applicants, Kellogg ~5,000, Sloan ~4500, Columbia ~6700.