This sounds like a reasonable explanation, but do colleges have transparency into who applied where nationwide? I would expect a college to know the absolute ex

This sounds like a reasonable explanation, but do colleges have transparency into who applied where nationwide? I would expect a college to know the absolute exact number of its own applicants/applications, but beyond that it should be only an educated guess, as long as the SAT is not in the business of selling everybody their data. But then, who knows, maybe the SAT is doing exactly that.