<p>I'll actually have to disagree with a previous poster.</p>
<p>Obviously I'm banking on anecdotes and not statistics. But I'd say that personality is more of a way to distinguish between candidates at schools that send multiple kids to top schools. Schools with the academic capacity to send that many kids to such schools are going to offer an academic experience that is highly critical and subjective in nature. At those schools, because students are theoretically cloistered around the upper end of the grading spectrum, intelligence isn't linear. Schools know that these schools do an excellent job of preparing most of their kids for college, and yet for diversity's sake, they cannot accept every applicant from even the best schools.</p>
<p>To get accepted to a top school from the top hs, you can't just have stats. Those are practically included once you're in the top X% of your hs. They want to see that you have taken every opportunity to YOUR best advantage, instead of just taking what's handed to you without thought. When schools see someone who has become someone noteworthy with their school's resources, that becomes personality and may be the tipping point in a decision.</p>
<p>At less prestigious schools, intelligence tends to be more linear. There may not be a big difference between the val and sal, but the top 5% is drastically different from second quartile. Colleges know this, and so only a few, if any, kids from such schools are generally considered for admission to top colleges (or even apply in the first place). To be ready for college academics, one has to prove themselves capable with objective criteria like GPA, SATs, and class rank.</p>