The most competitive school at Cornell is now Dyson School with a 3% acceptance rate.
I think why so many feel college admission is unpredictable is because we don’t have access to the bigger picture. Schools are trying to balance their class geographically, by major, socioeconomically, by ECs, etc… Only the schools themselves have access to that information. That also means that the kids from over represented locations and for the most popular majors can’t predict if they are the ones that are going to balance out the class the way the college wants or if they will be disappointed in the Spring.