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<p>In the scenario Consolation described, in the contest of this thread, the problem for the applicant is finding a list of colleges to apply to that includes colleges </p>
<p>a) challenging enough to be interesting for a very accomplished high school student, </p>
<p>and </p>
<p>b) likely to admit that applicant so that the applicant ends up somewhere fitting. </p>
<p>I think that’s a tough problem. If there are colleges on the low end of the top tier that reject applicants because those applicants are too good for those colleges, that only complicates matters more. (I have no idea if there are a lot of colleges that make admission decisions that way, but at least some are reputed to do that in multiple, independent anecdotes.)</p>