I recall you mentioning this before, mithawk, and can understand why it would be in the interests of the institution to do so, especially when there are so many reasonably robust markers of academic success already available to them at the admissions gate.
Interestingly, what I've heard of one of their neighbors across the river is that Berklee College of Music, whose stature in its own field is elite, has relatively generous admissions (about 50% acceptance), but dramatically high freshman attrition (about 60% graduation), possibly because the available precollege markers for success in their programming are much less consistently predictive, and certainly less predictive than how those students actually do in Berklee classes. So the first year is essentially its own post-tuition bill admissions performance exercise (aka, a weedout year).
