<p>Yeah, accepting medalists from the IMO and the IPhO is probably one of the simplest ways to attract good students for engineering and the sciences. Unfortunately, I know some of these people, including me, have very limited interests, so this might be a problem for the well-rounded students requirement. Most people start expanding their interests after high school though. I couldn’t care less about anything except math in high school (and I couldn’t care less about the math taught in school either), so I would probably have been rejected by all the Ivies had I tried to apply to the US for undergrad. :)</p>
<p>In my home country getting a medal at the IMO was a free ticket to any university regardless of what your other grades were. This wasn’t such a good thing though, because after getting that ticket, you could pretty much stop going to school…</p>