I will agree with many others here. In my son’s class here in Ohio, there are students headed to Princeton, Brown, MIT, Columbia and UChicago next year. Each had stats in the 2300+, 4 point range. All had one unique quality that made their application stand out. Two were recruited athletes and the other three were all deeply involved in one ativity or another. This seems to have made these kids kind of “high stats plus”, if that makes any sense. By contrast, another guy with very similar stats but more superficial ECs did not get in to any of the Ivys where he applied. Does that mean that a “normal” high stats kid has no chance at the Ivys (or Stanford, UC, etc)? No. But with the crazy number of applications, anything that distinguished one straight A, 99th percentile SAT scorer from the rest in the pile is a significant advantage. I would therefore think that a “normal” braniac’s chances at the uber selective schools is probably substantially less than the published acceptance rates.