Physics GRE Discussion Forums

So I see that some schools, like Iowa State and SUNY-Stony Brook, have huge numbers of applicants. Does anyone know why? Are a lot of them internationals? (do internationals tend to apply to certain schools in particular?) Chinese internationals may be particularly attracted to SUNY-Stony Brook (since it had Chen-Ning Yang) and it seems that a lot of Chinese students got into iowa state (since chinese universities have "admissions forums" themselves and a lot of them applied for iowa state). This seems true for Alberta as well.

Some of the really low ranked schools also have a lot of applicants.