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I think the error in assuming that an applicant to Penn with SAT scores above the 75th percentile has a "better than even" chance of being admitted isn't in the correct calculation of the 75th percentile, but in failing to understand that even competitive applicants are never more than 50% assured of being admitted to any of the ultra-competitive schools. A person with a SAT-M score of 800 is certainly above the 75th percentile, but that fact alone does not mean that person has a "better than even" chance of admission based on that fact alone.
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kluge, you may have misunderstood the point I was trying to make, but we're actually on the same page. I wasn't addressing the correct calculation of the 75th percentile, but rather the fact that a kid in that range still has only a 1 in 5 chance of being accepted, which Penn reveals in a table on the page to which I linked, but which most of the other schools would not specifically reveal (instead merely providing the 1st and 3rd quartile scores). Intuitively, we all know that the top schools reject a lot more kids with high scores than they accept but, as I said, Penn is the only school of which I'm aware that gives some specific numbers for this. There may be others, but I'm just not aware of them.</p>