I think that a lot of people focus too much on 4.0 uw GPA/1600 SAT/2 800 Subjects. First of all, there aren’t a lot of kids in that category. Second, it’s pretty clear that a good number of accepted are NOT all perfect stats. Third - and this is understandable - many applicants and families put too much weight on getting perfect stats. Subject tests aren’t even required for UChicago, despite the fact that everyone seems to submit them. My kid didn’t and still got in. Her other stats were tops but that failed to get her admitted EA.
What UChicago is looking for is that special someone who will thrive there and just loves the school. If your scores and your academic performance are good enough so that they know you will do well in the intense academic environment, then it’s going to be the rest of your application that convinces them to select you. Many mistake ED for a way in despite lower scores and GPA. It’s not. It’s merely an easy way for Admissions to capture a whole lotta kids who woulda committed anyway. The certainty attached to those ED’s allows them to lower their admit rate, raise the corresponding yield, and spend a lot more time on some very interesting non-binding applications. Others mistake EA as carrying the same weight as an ED app. It doesn’t - UChicago has been accepting more ED1’s than EA’s despite a likely sizably larger EA applicant pool. An EA reveals that UChicago is not necessarily your first choice so you need either to explain convincingly why that’s the case and that you still really really really want to go there, or have something about your application that you know they really really really want, in order to be accepted EA. Keep in mind that this all IMHO.
Have no idea whether an A- / 1460 SAT is enough to get anyone past the first gate, or second gate, or third. There is going to be some threshold at which they consider you academically qualified for UChicago; however, given that they have admitted some pretty low test scores in the past, not even sure that threshold is the same for each person. What I suspect is that they divvy up that applicant pool very quickly into “yes”, “no” and “maybe”. They spend the most time on that last category and defer quite a huge number as a result.