<p>Personally I had a strong but not top of my class GPA at a strong high school, a great SAT score, and great ECs. The ECs and SAT were enough to get me into every non-HYP school I applied to at some point - Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, Duke, Northwestern - but not enough to get me into HYP (WL at H). I believe that the non HYP Ivies were willing to forgive a little on the GPA, but HYP didn’t.</p>