“Hard to imagine how well the average underpaid overwhelmed admission officer with 5 minutes to review an application and dozens to complete each day can really try to know an applicant”
I think that a handful of applications on the margins get most of the time and thought. Maybe this isn’t true at Princeton, but at Purdue, a lot of outcomes are pretty predictable. The hard cases are the valedictorian with lower scores, the valiant poor kid with OK grades in a tough family situation, etc. They spend a lot more than 5 minutes on those.