Great point. I finally got into Draft (and learned the suspicious pizza superstition), and did a "math post" on it last night. If 80% accepted students are funded in school A, and A's acceptance rate is 10%, that's 8% chance to be funded. Meanwhile, if school B funds all its accepted students, with an acceptance rate as low as 5%, applying to school B actually has a lower chance of getting fully funded.
That was my point last night.
Now I have a second thought. Thanks to you. I imagine myself sitting in an MFA classroom, being the only one (or two) student without funding. That's terrible. Also, when hanging out with my fellow writer classmates, they might be talking all over about their stupid undergrad students, how to teach them the ABCs of creative writing as a TA, and complaining about the school's "poor" funding and other forms of financial aids...eventually I'll stop going out with them.
In programs that fully fund half their students, (NYU for instance), I also can picture the tension between fully funded students and the other...