There are no rules that say you can't oversign, just rules that say you have to be under by a certain date. So saying that oversigning is the wrong way is really just a personal opinion. In an ideal world, there would be no attrition and you would always just sign the number of scholarships you have available. That however, is not the world we live in. If you just sign 85 and tell three kids sorry, once the attrition happens, you've put yourself at a disadvantage because you could have three kids that wanted to be here. Scholarships are kinda like airline seats. Delta oversells their flights because they know almost exactly how many people wont show up for any given flight. In the rare instance that everyone shows up, they find a way to get to the number down where it needs to be.