Great review michigantrumpet! I second mav3rick---I'm also an international student and would love to hear info about more schools, in particular Berkeley, and Stanford.
Well, the thing that surprised me (more than the ~ 5% acceptance rate) was the fact that they expect 2/3rds of the invited students to decline the offers? Sounds a little too risky? Or is that the norm?
I'm reminded of what my friend told me about Berkeley (I read it elsewhere in the forum, I forget where); basically in the theory group at berkeley, they gave 10 admits last time around, expecting only around six to take it. But no one dropped it, and that meant that this year, they could take only about 3-4 students :-(