[fardo]

I wouldn’t discount the reputational and long-term danger for the school of potentially losing “peak reach school” status, which this change may be symptomatic of.

Harvard has long been the beneficiary of a reputation of “if you get in, you’re very likely to go, as it’s probably also your top choice or very close.” This maintained an upward pressure force in Harvard to keep it a top school, because short term a strong reputation drives top-ranking students that want to study with other top students, and long term those high quality students are likely to accomplish more and further reinforce the reputation.

The flywheel starts to break if when you’re choosing between Harvard and somewhere else, you pick somewhere else. These kinds of small shifts are the rumblings you’d expect to see if the edifice was beginning to crack.