<p>Quantmech is right.</p>
<p>And I’ll also say that no matter how absurd an elite school makes their selection criteria, people will look at the evidence and fill in the gaps such that their perception of the school is unchanged. If someone tells you that half of the USAMO kids are rejected, people imagine that they must have gotten B’s in english class, looked at their shoes during the interview, or robbed a liquor store.</p>