There was one subjective factor which is not mentioned, but is almost certainly important, which is the high school that the applicant attended. Even simply looking at my kid’s Naviance revealed that some schools accepted students from my kid’s HS at a much higher than average rate, while others, which were no more selective, consistently accepted students at a far lower than average rate. Moreover, there was a strong geographical factor here. The majority of the colleges with a higher acceptance rate for the high school were in the Midwest (the HS in in Chicagoland), and, the farther a college was, the more likely it was to have a lower than average acceptance rate.
This was true both for private and OOS public schools.
My question is: where does this usually kick in? Is it based on the relationships that a regional rep has with the high school, or whether the people higher up the chain need to be familiar with a high school and have a positive opinion of it?